So Long Been Dreaming (28 page)

“There are lights,” he whispers. “Far out along the horizon. But they come closer and they are fast.”

“How many?” Hava asks. “How fast?”

Umeneni’s voice is a shudder. “Too many and too fast.”

Umeneni has the best sight among us. He has always spied far and wide. Once he saw a line of five Lopo hunters winding furtive and silent through the path of the big cats, covered in leaves and soil. Yet Umeneni saw them.

My brother says, “Maybe they come in different boats. Maybe they have new boats.”

“Maybe,” Umeneni says.

Hava knows the Lopo. He’s tasted their golden blood.

“We will wait,” Hava says. “And hide.”

Umeneni says nothing, but I feel his gaze in the dark just as close as his skin. The disturbance in my brother’s voice wafts through me like a shiver.

Before our attacks on the Lopo, Hava would always draw our positions in the sand, in the earth. We and our soldiers, fifty strong as they once were, and even now when they are twenty, we all gathered around this map of our close futures and Hava would take his finger and trace patterns in the ground. His touch glided through the fine grains like the gods must sift our lives, separating some, pushing others together. We knew at some time the waters or the rain would wipe these marks away, but we never stayed long enough to see it. And so the lines of life that Hava traced in the earth would remain in our minds, marked deep and true. And we took them with us into battle. Lines like the grooves on the skin of our palms. Lines like the veins that run beneath our skin.

Blood paths.

And I would think, always, Is this the path of my children, if ever I should have them? Would their feet ever imprint on sand that does not wash away after two turnings of the moon?

The lights scud toward us like falling stars, rolling through the surface of the waves. Impossibly fast. Faster than any Lopo boat. The closer they come, the clearer we see. Not just Umeneni and his far sight. We all see.

The lights do not touch the waters. They fly above it.

“Not the Lopo,” Umeneni whispers, in fear. Umeneni who has killed a hundred Lopo and yet with me his touch is gentle. He fears little. He doesn’t even fear my brother.

I feel our soldiers shifting behind us. What do we do? Run? Scatter?

“Stay,” Hava says, loud enough so it branches through the trees and quiets the others.

The lights come silent. They pour day onto the shore, the trees, our hidden forms among the forest floor. White day. The lights bring wind and heat like a summer breeze, and the shake and growl of a thunderstorm, but only in passing. Only in nearness, like you hear someone breathe in sleep if you are the only one awake.

The lights sweep over our heads like birds and disappear.

And in a flash, my brother chases the beat of their windless wings through the feet of the bowing trees.

I run, Umeneni by my side, our soldiers around us. We follow Hava and the storm of the lights as they skate the top of the forest. If these are Lopo, we must track them. We must get to them before they join the Lopo in our villages and become one.

The ground stabs my feet. The forest is alive with the snap and crack of our fiery path, cut by my brother.

These Lopo fly.

The three words beat a rhythm in my breath. The loud drumming of a death dance.

I want to grab Hava back and keep him still. I want to hold Umeneni to my breasts and say, Wait.

The blood can wait.

These Lopo fly.

Yet if the Lopo had such ability to fly among the clouds like birds, surely we would have known it. Surely you cannot go from water to sky in just a few turnings of the moon. The Lopo are not gods. They bleed, though their blood is golden like honey. But their spirits are not red like my brother’s.

“Hava!” I shout. I don’t care. The lights drown all but the closest noise.

But he doesn’t stop. In his hand flashes the silver of his killing knife. He hunts the lights.

“Rumi village,” Umeneni says, on a gasp. Running as I run.

I recognize the path, even in moonlight and the dying blaze of the beasts overhead.

We are going home.

My brother stops on the edge of our village. What was once our village, where the old women sat outside their homes and braided long leaves into mats for our beds. Now the Lopo lie on our mats, still stained by the blood of our mothers.

Hava crouches at the feet of the trees. Our soldiers gather around in a line of attack, the positions of habit. I barely gather breath enough to speak before Hava turns to me, the red now so vibrant in his eyes that I barely see the white.

“They are friends of the Lopo,” Umeneni says, his voice harsh, his teeth bared.

The lights touched ground in the clear spaces of the village. They are shaped almost like boats, almost like birds. Strange inbetween creatures that bellow the white of bright day over all the scattered homes. Yet the mud roofs don’t melt and the grass of the walls do not burn.

“But the Lopo do not come out,” I say. “Where are their brothers, if it’s true they are friends?”

“The Lopo hide,” Hava says, resting the tip of his killing knife in the earth. “See the shadows move inside that house? They do not come out. They are afraid.”

There is no fear in Hava’s voice. He stares at the inbetween creatures.

A door opens on the belly of one of the creatures. We wait, silent, but no Lopo emerge from the homes to greet the open door. Not a stirring.

A tall figure walks from the creature’s belly, but it isn’t clad in tattered Lopo grey. It wears stitchless black. And it is the shape of us, with arms and legs. But big like our mothers and fathers had been.

Hava sheaths his knife and reaches to his other hip. Soon he holds a Lopo gun and aims it through the trees. Tracking. Umeneni does the same, but I don’t move.

Things that travel inside a flying creature. How will guns help? Better to sneak up on them. Better to jump on their backs and bring them down one by one, and then use the knife.

More figures emerge from the creature’s belly. I lose the count at fifty. Soon the entire village is filled by these black-clad people. They are beetle-shaped on the head and about the eyes, as though they come from insect kin.

A voice calls out. It sounds like language, but not ours. Lopo words. Calling to the Lopo who hide in our houses.

But the Lopo do not come out. They are cowards.

So the beetle people swarm into the houses. Noise erupts, shouting, gunfire, flashes of light and the shake of violence. Some of the beetle people wait outside, not speaking. Not helping. They stand like trees.

Soon the rest of them reappear. The lights from their inbetween creatures reflect on their insect heads.

They hold the Lopo by their long spindly arms. Lopo warriors, men and women, some of them bleeding. They are ugly clean, and uglier in blood. They make a sticky yellow visage and their too-long legs bend deeper than normal, driven to kneel by these beetle people. The beetle people set the Lopo in the middle of our village, like the Lopo had once done to us, and make them sit on the earth. They hold the Lopo guns and they do not say a word. Yet they all move in agreement as though they can read one another’s minds.

Enemies of the Lopo, yet Hava does not twitch or give us a command. Are these beetle people here to return our villages to us? Or will they push us to the ground, smoothing it with our blood?

My hands are cold with the thought. I touch Umeneni’s back to feel his warmth. We must hide. We must pretend we are not here and when these beetle people leave with the Lopo, we will have our villages back. And we will grow old under the sun like the women who weaved and carved and remembered.

But my brother does not move.

One of the beetle people walks away from the others. The insect head faces the trees, turns toward us. It raises an arm. I see now that it has five fingers on its hand. On both hands. It is very much in the shape of our people. Except for the insect head.

But then it removes its insect head, like you would remove a hat. The black eyes go with it too and beneath it all is a face much like Umeneni’s. Like mine.

A woman.

“Come out,” it says, toward the trees. To us. Somehow it speaks our language even though the lilt and sigh of the words are unfamiliar, like when the Lopo speak. Yet we understand. It says, “Come out now, children.”

I want to grip Umeneni’s hand, and my brother’s, but instead we hold our weapons. Hava stands and looks over his shoulder at me.

“Stay,” he says. “All of you.”

“No, Hava.” I try to catch his arm, but he walks out alone toward the beetle people. Toward the one who has a face like mine, and speaks our language, though she flew to us like a bird.

Umeneni tries to touch my shoulder, but I run out after my brother.

The beetle people swivel to face me. I stop, planting my feet, feeling the night air breathe cold up my bare legs. Hava turns.

“Ara!” He gestures sharply. “Go back!”

“No,” the beetle woman says. Closer and I see she is like my mother was, beneath the smooth clothing. She has a woman’s breasts and she is tall like one, broader than me about the hips. Her voice, free of the insect head, is the gentle trickle of river water. “Let her come too. Both of you.”