Paul Cook: Children of the Plains

Menni burped loudly and began to cry. This broke the awkward silence. Oto handed his spear to Nianki and took his son from Kinar’s arms. He held Menni at arm’s length in scarred, callused hands.

“Last child,” he said in an odd, hollow voice. “I give you my protection.”

He balanced the boy on his hip and used his free hand to lift a dark, shriveled object that hung around his neck on a thong. It was the dried paw of a panther, black as a moonless sky. Many seasons ago the panther had crept into their camp and killed Oto’s firstborn son, Ibani, while the boy slept. Oto had slain the panther after an epic chase of forty days. Since that day, the spirit of the panther had been bound to Oto and done his bidding, warding off evil.

Oto tied a knot in the thong to shorten it and hung the talisman around Menni’s neck. Kinar’s face glowed with happiness. She took Menni back and held him close, no longer fretted by his size or weight.

Nianki paced past them, resuming the trek to the next night’s camp. Amero started after her but stopped when Oto gruffly ordered them to halt.

“Spear.”

Nianki hefted the weapon and tossed it sideways to her father. He caught it easily with one hand.

“I’ll make the path,” Nianki announced. “Come.”

Amero watched in silence as she strode away. Oto waited until Nianki was ten paces ahead, as custom prescribed, then resumed the march. Kinar and the baby followed him, leaving Amero to bring up the rear.

Amero looked back at the mysterious footprints. Little was left of them. The clay had cracked under Oto’s heel. A fresh breeze stirred the taller grasses, carrying with it the sighs of spirits. Amero blinked. Was the panther ghost passing nearby, seeking its new charge?

He turned and hurried after his family, the end of his long stick trailing in the dust behind him.

Precious little game could be found on the high savanna that day. Even rabbits were scarce, as though another hunting party had passed down the trail ahead of them. Kinar found some wild onions and a handful of sticky tuber-roots. The onions were bitter and the tubers too sweet, so their midday meal was both skimpy and unpleasant. Oto finished quickly and resumed the lead position. Nianki fell back again.

When they drew near Mossback Creek, Oto, in the lead, suddenly made the quick, downward, chopping gesture that meant “take cover.” All of them dropped to the ground silently. Not even the baby made so much as a whimper.

Nianki left her mother and brothers in the cover afforded by the scrubby bushes and crawled up the slight rise to where Oto lay motionless. As she crested the hill on her belly she could finally see what had caused the alert. The savanna was no longer empty. Two people crouched on the bank of Moss-back Creek.

They appeared to be excited about something, pointing to the creek. The errant breeze brought only snatches of their voices to Nianki’s ears, but she could understand none of their words.

“What is it?”

Nianki flinched as Amero’s whisper sounded from below her left shoulder. Instantly she froze as the two strangers rose to their feet and looked in their direction.

Amero gasped at the strangers’ appearance, and Nianki’s left hand moved over to pinch his arm, signaling silence. The strangers appeared not to see them and went back to their study of the creek. After much talking and gesturing, the pair shook their heads, crossed the creek, and headed away from the hidden plainsmen.

Oto waited until the two were far distant, then got to his feet. Nianki and Amero followed suit.

“Who were they?” Amero asked excitedly as they rejoined Kinar and the baby. “Did you see their faces? They were black! Dark as the night sky!” He touched his own skin, burned brown by the fierce sun, and repeated, “Dark as the night sky!”

“Why did you leave your mother and the baby?” Oto demanded.

Amero’s enthusiasm faded in the face of his father’s obvious anger. He hung his head, saying nothing, knowing there was no reason he could give that would satisfy Oto.

Nianki shook her head at her brother’s foolishness. He had been wrong to leave Kinar. His whispered question had nearly betrayed their presence to the strangers. Amero was always asking questions, wanting to know things. He could not be content to do a thing because he was told it was right, or because it had been done a certain way for as long as anyone remembered. He always wanted to know why. It was not a trait that endeared him to their father.

Oto was still glaring at his eldest son. Nianki spoke, distracting her father. “Have you seen men like that before?”

With a final shake of his head, Oto turned toward the creek.

“No,” was his curt response.

“Then why did we hide?” Nianki demanded of his back. “They might’ve known where we could find game. We could’ve asked about those strange prints we saw earlier.”

Oto said nothing, but just kept on walking. Nianki shook her head in disgust.

“Oto is wise.”

Nianki turned to look at her mother.

Kinar added, “He’s kept us alive by being cautious.”

“There were only two of them.”

Kinar clucked her tongue in that annoying way of hers, hefted Menni higher on her hip, and followed after her mate.

Amero had gone to the top of the slight rise and was staring in the direction the two strangers had taken. As she drew near, Nianki cuffed him on the head.

“Stupid,” she said, though without malice.

He ignored the blow and continued to gaze into the distance. “Who knew there were people like that?” he said. “Their skin was black as the night sky. It was so strange.”

Amero’s hair, like Nianki’s, was light brown, straight as a spear, and reached to the middle of his back. They wore their hair tied back with a leather thong. The strangers’ hair had been close to their heads, and so tightly curled it didn’t move when the wind blew.

“I wonder — ”

“Enough,” Nianki ordered. When Amero began a sentence with those two words, there was no telling where it could lead, nor how long it would take the boy to get there. She gave him a rough shove. “Stop mooning and start walking. I’m thirsty.”

Unfortunately, when they joined their parents and Menni, they found the creek had been fouled. Both banks were churned up with many footprints — the same narrow prints they’d encountered that morning.

The torn carcass of a red deer lay in the water, its flesh-less face pointed skyward. Clouds of flies rose from the bloated hide when Oto’s shadow fell across it. By the smell, it had been dead for some days. Amero recoiled from the rank odor and plucked a green grass stem to hold over his nose. At her request, he pulled one for his mother too.

“I guess this is what the strangers were so excited about. No wonder they didn’t drink,” Nianki said. “Never saw animals dirty a stream like this. Why would they do it?”

Oto frowned. “Marking territory. This means, ‘all others, keep out.’”

“Fair warning. We should listen.”

In answer, Oto crossed the water twenty paces upstream from the deer carcass. Reluctantly, the rest of the family followed. The normally cold creek water was tepid from the long day’s heat, but it still tasted good.

The east bank proved as empty of game as the west bank. Even birds had abandoned the plain. The poor hunting, prolonged silence, and empty vistas wore on their nerves. Without realizing it, they closed ranks, the gaps between them shrinking.

The sun was halfway to its rest when the smoky blue peaks of the mountains first appeared on the horizon. They resembled thunderclouds piled up in the eastern sky and were much farther away than they looked.

Amero took his turn making the path. Being slower than Nianki and having less stamina than his father, Amero’s pace was almost leisurely. He picked his way through the grass, swinging his stick in a wide arc to expose gopher holes and dislodge vipers. His stomach grumbled loudly. To assuage his empty belly, Amero chewed a grass stem. It didn’t help much.