Havilah

[Mithrae]

Ken lay on his back on the soft grass, eyes closed, enjoying the caress of the warm sun on his skin. A hundred sounds thundered in his keen hearing, but he found them only peaceful and reassuring; the murmuring of the stream nearby, the calls of a hands-count of birds he could identify, the chittering of a couple of insects he knew and many others he did not. If any of them quieted, then he would have to seize his spear and be alert for predators lurking near his small clearing. Perhaps one would catch him unaware anyway. The birds were wary of the great cats, but would have no fear of a crocodile if one happened to wander the banks seeking some warm rocks for sunning on.

Ken almost smiled at the thought of becoming a meal for a fellow sun-bather, scarcely concerned at the prospect. Summer by summer it seemed there were fewer and fewer big animals to be found in the area. Hunting parties now ventured forth only in the warm seasons and only once a moon even then, usually gone for days at a time. It had been years since Ken had joined one, his old bones struggling to keep up with the younger men. Now he spent most of his days catching fish or snaring coneys and other small game an hour or two out from the village.

The gods-cursed village! He was always glad to be away from it, and as the ancient dangers of the wild forest were tamed he had even begun thinking of living out here permanently. He was sure that few in the village would miss him if he did, a crotchety old man with seemingly no place in this modern world. It wasn't that he particularly disliked any of the tribe, or they him, but most of them simply didn't understand the old ways or what they had lost, and for his part he so often felt trapped and cloistered there.

The birdsong had stilled and quieted further downstream. Ken rolled to his knees, surprisingly swift despite his age and put his hand on his spear. There was nothing in sight, but glancing at the swaying grass he knew that the breeze was blowing his scent towards whatever might be down there. The birds in the nearest trees in that direction still seemed lively, only a few reacting to his smooth movements, so whatever approached wasn't too close yet. It was probably nothing dangerous, but knowing it was hardly worth taking a risk over, Ken picked up a stone and his spear and rose to a crouch.

He set out away from the stream, hoping to circle around his unseen adversary and sneak up on its downwind side. Picking his way with care through the undergrowth, avoiding most of the shrubs and any fallen twigs which would anounce his presence, he estimated an arc which would take him three or four spear-throws out from the creek then back to its banks. He kept an eye out for tracks of his quarry as he moved, knowing that most predators would likely skulk through the forest on one side or the other in hopes of catching their prey drinking at the stream. Only small game trails seemed to be in sight, and passing near a snare on one of them he saw with satisfaction a rabbit neatly killed by it, strangled or perhaps its neck broken as the sapling he'd put to task whipped up with its noosed victim.

Ignoring his catch, Ken continued around until he reached the stream again, still none the wiser to his adversary's identity. Moving even slower and more carefully now, he picked his way through the trees a short distance from the banks, senses straining for any sight or sound or smell to warn him of danger. Then he almost laughed aloud as he rounded a particularly dense thicket to see one of the girls from the village, apparently picking pretty flowers near the water's edge.

She started as he emerged from the trees near her and looked on the verge of fleeing. "Too slow Havah, if I were a leopard or wolf" chuckled Ken as he approached her. "Have you no spear or sling to protect yourself?"

"There's no wolves and leopards around here no more," said the girl, sounding indignant that she'd reacted so. Then, eyeing him with more than a hint of challenge, "Have you no clothes to protect your dignity?"

Ken laughed even louder at that, apparently not the response she'd anticipated. "Come with me while I gather my catches for the day, and my cursed loincloth. There's fewer beasties about these days it's true, but I sighted a leopard a little further out last summer, and while out one evening heard some wolves on the wind the year before. You've less to fear from my spear than their teeth," he said with a wink. "I would be heading back soon enough anyway. But why are you out here?"

Falling in beside him as he started walking upstream, Havah rose a hand to her belly. "I finally have a baby coming" she replied proudly.

"Congratulations" said Ken with genuine joy. She was sixteen, he knew, and after two years of marriage had been fearing she might never bear children.

"I always enjoyed the woods when I was a girl," continued Havah, "and soon I'll be stuck in the village for gods know how many years to come. So I've been walking out whenever I could since the past moon."

"A pleasure worth teaching your children also. Too few of our young folk appreciate the lands beyond the village and its fields."

"Is that why you're out here, alone and naked?" she asked.

Ken laughed again. "If it didn't upset people I wouldn't bother with the loincloth in the village either. Did your mother or her mother ever tell you why they started covering their bodies?"

"My mother never said anything, and I never knew her mother. I thought we always had."

"Your mother maybe, but probably not her mother. There was no point, before we built the village."

"You remember that?" asked Havah, looking up at him in wide-eyed wonder.

Ken pretended to swat at the back of her head, which she nimbly ducked. "Our mighty village isn't as ancient as these old bones, girl. Fifty-six summers I've seen. I must've been about your age, perhaps a little older when we began building it. We had to do it I suppose, we just didn't know what it would cost." He sighed.

"What do you mean? We're safer now than we used to be, aren't we? That's what my father said."

"Aye, we're safer, and there's more of us. That's why we decided to do it. The year before I was born there was a harsh winter, and roaming further than usual our people found a village to the north that the Mahal people had built inside the lands we'd always used. My mother said that we tried to tell them to leave, and then tried to make them leave with fire. Many of them died, especially their children and elderly, but most of their men escaped the burning village and hunted our people. We fled of course, for they were a band of men pursuing our smaller number of men, women and children. By the time they gave up the chase, a dozen of our own young and frail had fallen behind, my mother said."

By now they'd returned to Ken's little clearning, and as he adjusted his recovered loincloth he could see that Havah, a girl who'd grown up watching the goats being butchered in winter, looked shocked at the thought of people killing each other. Fistfights among the young men were not uncommon, but as Ken recalled there'd only ever been two deaths and the last was when she was still a child.

He gestured into the forest, and led the way to check the snares he'd set that morning. "My mother said that we roamed wide for the rest of that year and the next," he continued, "and found another village in our lands to the west. The Methu people that one, but almost as big as the other. Some young men sent to check said that the Mahal people were rebuilding their village. The Methu people wouldn't leave but agreed not to come any further into our lands, at least. We thought we could make do well enough, but by the time I was your age we'd found yet another village of the Mahal people even further in. It was still small, and some said we could kill these ones, but others said we could never kill them all, not forever."

"Why were the village people such a threat?" asked Havah, as they reached one of the snares, this one empty.

Ken glanced around for a moment, then bent down and picked up a seed from a nearby bush. "The women noticed it first" he said, showing her the token. "Collecting the fruits and berries of an area as we moved from camp to camp, they often found patches of them where we'd left our waste in earlier years. And while many of the wild plants they found had few berries or sour fruit, most of the ones grown from our camps were good and productive. When they do this year after year, the village people - and now us - have more food to feed more people. I guess they just get too many people, they don't know everyone in the village, maybe they fight or don't trust each other. Whatever the reason, eventually they seem to start new villages."

"Okay," Havah replied as she helped him reset the snare from which they'd pulled the dead bunny Ken had noted earlier. "But what's all this got to do with wearing clothes?" She patted one of the flowers she'd fixed in her hair, unconsciously or perhaps self-consciously.

The gesture was not lost on Ken, who smiled at the sight. "I had one mother and a dozen fathers," he told her. "We moved from camp to camp, never in one place for more than a couple of moons. The older children and all the women not looking after the youngest helped to gather fruit and nuts and berries. All the men went out to hunt, to work together in tracking and killing our prey and share in the victory and homecoming rituals. A mother can never forget a child she bears, but for anyone else to say that this child is mine or that child is not makes no sense when day to day we all depended on each other and shared our joys and burdens alike. You are married to Shelah so he knows the child you bear is his, but those of us alive before we built the village always thought such concerns were trivial or ignored them altogether."

Ken stopped talking as he removed the game from the last of his snares. He knew Havah was a smart girl. She looked down at her own loincloth as he handed her the little fox's body so he could reset the snare. "You're saying that clothes are just to make sure other men don't touch me? To say that I belong to Shelah?"

"A bit more than that," Ken replied kindly. "Some say that clothes are beautiful, that they find each other more desireable when we hide our bodies. And I've noticed that since some of the younger folk have started to farm only plots which they claim as their own, the ones who've sown larger areas or been blessed with better harvests have started asking me or the other trappers to trade them the softest pelts in the rarest colours to make the nicest clothes with." Ken patted the fox's fur as he took it from her and started back towards the village. "A richer red than normal, and young and soft too. But it's going into the common stores, same as everything else I get. I don't mind the clothes themselves much, but these kids starting to think they're better than the others because of what the earth has provided them really have me worried."

"Why is that?" asked Havah as she hurried to catch up, loincloth in hand and looking mighty pleased with herself.

"Because I've heard some of the others complaining about how the area they're farming is rockier, how they have to work harder to do as well. Work!" he spat the word. "A few hours a day at most, except at sowing and harvest time, to provide food for themselves and their families and often plenty above and beyond that. We used to be gone on a hunt from before dawn usually 'til afternoon, or sometimes for days, but we never thought it a chore. Or at least I never did," Ken added conscientiously. "Maybe the older men grew tired of it, but they never said so. The hunt was a bond of brotherhood and a mark of honour, something we were proud to be a part of."

"It sounds like a fine life, roaming free like that. I wish I'd been there," said Havah wistfully.

"Oh, we had our struggles, make no mistake about that. We seem to get more sickness now, but even back then people died when the winters were harsh or the rains were few. But at least they were struggles we all shared together.� Cresting a rise, they could see their home nestled on the shores of a small lake into which the stream emptied. Smoke rose from some early cooking fires, looking pale and ghostly in the late afternoon sunlight. A peaceful scene. A truly beautiful scene in fact, but Havah wondered how much more beauty the man beside her had known in the wilder lands and his innocence of youth. They paused there for a moment, then Ken let out a little sigh before continuing their journey. “I fear for the day when these boys view this land as something to make one better than another, always wanting more and seeing our very survival as a burden."