The Game of Shepherd and Dawse (9 page)

Soladus lived at the very top of the plain, about a mile from where all the main activity in the settlement took place. His wooden house stood alone and could be clearly seen as a silhouette on a moonlit night. He chose to live in this specific location in the settlement because it gave him a clear vantage point as to everything that was going on in and around the plain. Being in this position gave him a great deal of extra insight as to what was going on in people’s lives, and a better chance of him being able to help them. He would sit many a day doing the chores that his body still enabled him to do while watching over the village in the meantime. He enjoyed sewing and making clothes for the newly born because his hands still worked well, and this activity gave him a great sense of being useful to the community.

The scream could be heard for a mile in every direction and it stunned every inhabitant of Shepherd Wood into a motionless silence. The sheer pitch of the scream could have split wood, but the scream was followed by what sounded like a never ending cry of, “Nooooo”!

Aisha was barely able to stand so several of the Shepherd Wood men came to Aisha’s aid in bewilderment, wondering what was going on.

“What is it my dear, Aisha, what is troubling you so”, asked Geisha.

“A man”, replied Aisha enigmatically. Again, she said, “A man”.

“It’s okay, Aisha”, Geisha said, as he held Aisha's hand and looked deeply into her frenzied and desperate eyes. “We’re here now. Look! There are at least five of us here. We’re here for you”, she said trying to comfort her friend.

Aisha shook her head sadly and amidst her many tears cried, “It’s my baby! My beautiful baby. It’s Aman”.

Aisha knew that something was very wrong, in the way a mother knows when something bad has happened to her child. And now she sank to her knees with tears streaming down her face. The men didn’t know what to do, so they stood there looking and feeling extremely useless. After all, they had never encountered this kind of emotion before. They looked around for the nearest mother they could find and sure enough three of them appeared. Parina, the high female elder instantly took charge of the situation, and Gelam and Sheena followed Parina’s lead. The men folk gladly gave the women their space.

“My baby, my beautiful baby”, Aisha continued to cry in a soft tearful voice while holding one hand on her stomach. Parina was initially confused by this as Aisha wasn’t a young woman and she had lost the ability to bare children.

Aisha looked Parina in the eyes and Parina instantly perceived the sheer panic Aisha was feeling. Parina had felt the same thing herself once when her son had fallen down a rock shaft and broken his leg, because this form of telepathy was the way people had once communicated with each other in times of trouble. Parina wasted no time before getting to grips with the situation.

“Gelam! Sheena! Take Aisha back to her hut and look for Sasha, as he'll want to be there. I’ll be along shortly. Teewok, gather a hunting party and take a sling-slack with you”.

A sling-slack was a half-circular shaped piece of animal hide that turned into a circular piece once opened. It had two oval shaped pieces of wood around the edges that locked into place to create a round stretcher that was large enough to carry an adult. When folded, it was easy for one person to carry. When opened, many people could hold it and between them carry a fair amount of weight. It also gave very good suspension to anyone who was lying on it.

Soladus had not heard the scream from his vantage point but could clearly see what was going on. He felt no need to go down and pitch in, so he simply sat in his chair very calmly. This wasn’t due to any lack of compassion. Soladus knew exactly what was going on. Indeed, he had been expecting it for some time, but his heart still felt heavy knowing that the time had finally come.

Speaking to himself he said, “What a shame to see the end of such a beautiful thing, but what a pleasure to have been a part of it”. Soladus let out a deep sigh, a sigh that spoke of mingled joy and sadness.

Teewok was the youngest of the trackers heading down to the bottom of the open plain. He had only recently been passed by the elders as a ‘beginner tracker’ and his road to becoming a fully-fledged ‘tracking master’ would take a great deal more study and dedication. If there was one thing that put Teewok above anyone else in the field of tracking, it was his keen sense of smell. He could detect autumn in the air at the height of summer and spring just after the height of winter. When it came to Aman, Teewok’s nose positively went into overdrive, likely due to the great affection he felt for her.

When Teewok was eight, he and his family had undertaken a location swap from a different tribe and he met Aman for the first time. Right from the start, he felt a strong connection with her and the gentle affection between them was mutual. One day, Teewok couldn’t help boasting to Aman that he could smell her coming down from the hills from a mile away, so Aman decided to play a little trick on Teewok, She bet him that if she ran into the wood he wouldn’t be able to discover her hiding place. Aman stopped short of offering him a kiss if he could, as she knew with that kind of prize on offer she would stand no chance of winning at all.

Aman knew exactly where she planned to hide. She would hide herself in the hollow of an ancient oak that was so wide it would have taken 10 people holding hands to circle it, and one had to climb the tree to reach the hollow. Knowing full well that Teewok wasn’t very good at climbing, Aman knew that victory would be hers, and the only thing that nearly gave Aman away was her need to let out a fit of laughter while Teewok sniffled and snorted around the base of the tree. Meanwhile, he wondered how someone could just vanish into thin air! Even more amazed was Teewok when he got back to the village, because Aman managed to creep up behind him without him noticing and to whisper in his ear, “Hey, Teewok. That’ll teach you”!

He probably would have been more annoyed with himself if Aman hadn’t given him a little peck on the cheek, because that alone made it all worthwhile in Teewok’s eyes.

As the hunting party made its way through the forest they also noted the lack of juju berries which was so unusual for that time of year. Makeshaw, the tracker master who led the search was less worried about the over-harvesting situation than he was about the safety of Aman. The berry situation puzzled him somewhat though, for he was the one who had impressed upon Aman not to over-pick the fruit in the first place. One thing seemed certain though – if they intended to find Aman, they needed to search the areas from which the berries had been taken.

Sure enough, it was Teewok who first located Aman but not in the way he had hoped or expected. Teewok had run lots of little scenarios through his head about finding Aman and being the one to come to her rescue. Perhaps she was in a ditch with a twisted ankle or had lost her footing and fallen down a ravine, he'd thought. Now that Teewok had found her, he wished he hadn’t. Any romantic thoughts quickly turned to tears which alerted the other trackers to Aman’s position.

Aman’s beautiful body lay motionless and covered with blood. Her face was barely recognisable due to the number of cuts and its swollen state. Her pretty little face had been ruined. The other strange thing was the fact that Aman’s trousers had been half torn off, as though she had been relieving herself and had fallen down while doing so, but there were no hills or ditches nearby so this wasn’t believable.

Teewok quickly pulled himself together, and before the others arrived on the scene, he managed to pull Aman’s trousers together, in order to save her modesty. Arod the healer among the group went to work straightaway. Aman’s body was completely motionless and Arod focused all his energies upon her. The rest of the group stood nervously by, while trying to come to terms with what had happened. The silence was eventually broken by Teewok as he murmured in a quiet voice, “What animal, what beast could do such a thing”?

Arod knew that this was no animal. He had healed many wounds inflicted by animals on complacent hunters and such wounds were relatively straightforward. Aman’s case was different. Arod used all the powers he had just to keep Aman alive but while working on her, he sensed an energy about her that wasn’t altogether clean and healthy. In fact, it felt dark. Arod upped the ante and gave it everything his heart and soul could muster up and eventually, he was rewarded with a faint groan.

“Thank you”, Arod said quietly, as he glanced skyward and thanked his spiritual guides.

The team had prepared the sling-slack and now they were ready to go. They picked Aman up very carefully and placed her upon it. They hurried back to the village as quickly as they possibly could while still trying to be careful not to cause any additional pain to Aman. They also carried back the berries Aman had harvested.

Back at the settlement, Aisha sensed the hunters and trackers return, so she busied herself by putting the finishing touches to the medicine bed. This was a place reserved for injured members of any hunt that had gone a little wrong. The bed was more padded than normal beds and slightly wider. Aisha lay the last of the healing herbs that Gelam and Sheena had managed to acquire from the other villagers by the pillow. Aisha was low herself on some essential ingredients because the picking season was just getting under way, but Parina had managed to rustle up a small sack of ready dried juju pips which would undoubtedly come in handy.

Getting the bed ready had given Aisha something to focus on whilst waiting for the party to return, as she didn’t want to appear over emotional when they arrived. Aisha kept ‘seeing’ the image of her child’s battered body lying motionless on the ground, while two hideously indescribable looking creatures stood over her. Every time she tried to get rid of the image, it kept coming back. Aisha tried to convince herself it was just her worried mind playing tricks on her, but it would only be a matter of time before she realised how true this ghastly vision had been.

While the tracker party made its way through the clearing in the woods, they noticed Soladus in the distance, leaving his house and making his way down the hill. Soladus wasn’t a young man and it would take some time for him to get there – the distance being just over a mile. Makeshaw nodded at Teewok and glanced in the old man’s direction. Teewok didn’t need to be told to give the old man a hand, as he knew instinctively what to do. As the party approached Aisha’s hut, they took the dowels from the wooden supports of the sling-slack and folded it up with Aman still inside it, to allow them to carry her through the door of the hut. Once the sling-slack was placed atop the bed, the two wooden supports were eased out of their bindings and the woodlanders laid the hide onto the healing bed. Despite Aisha's vision being spot on, it didn’t stop her from having to take a deep gulp of air when she first saw Aman laid in front of her.

Teewok turned to go and help Soladus but he nearly fell into him, as Soladus was now no more than two meters from the door of the hut. It was a remarkable feat, as every so often Soladus would appear to be far away in the distance, but would suddenly appear right where you were standing. He nodded solemnly at Teewok's amazed face and walked into the hut, whereupon everyone immediately made way for him.

Surprisingly he went first to Aisha and held both of her hands while he gazed calmly into the mother’s tired eyes. Aisha glanced at Aman laying on the bed as if to say “It’s Aman that needs your help, not me”.

“I know my dear”, Soladus comforted, “the healing has already started”.

He gave Aisha a slight nod then took up his position at the top end of the bed and placed his hands over Aman’s head. Soladus would spend the next two days healing Aman. He would take neither rest nor food; while the younger ones took it in turns to rest and eat.

He did not speak until the end of the second day, when he finally said, “All right, that’s as much as I can do for a time. She is stable now”.

Soladus turned to Sasha and Aisha and asked if they could help him back to his home, but Aisha felt torn - she didn’t want to leave Aman, but she also didn’t want to refuse Soladus after all he had done.

Parina quickly picked up on this and said, “It is okay, Aisha. You go. I’ll stay here with Aman”.

The walk to the house where Soladus lived did both Sasha and Aisha good as they were in need of some fresh air. During the walk, Soladus didn’t speak anything of Aman at all, but instead commented on how beautiful Shepherd Wood looked and how he remembered certain trees being at certain heights and what memories each one held for him. Little did they know at the time that even in these words of casual conversation, there were words of wisdom that would mean much to them both at a later time.

CHAPTER SIX

A HIDEOUS KNOWLEDGE COMES TO LIGHT

“
If you can’t change what you cannot accept, then accept what you cannot change.” ~ Aisha