Category: Fiction

“But why can’t we go look for her?” Irem’s face is pale, and her voice is twisted.

The headman’s look of irritated impatience quells her momentarily. “Irem…”

“She’s a baby, Keiji!” the young mother cries.

“And the last trace of her is two days away!” The annoyance Keiji feels is apparent in his tone.

Fia speaks now, her tone consoling. “Nagge says the little wild people are searching for Bian.”

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?” demands Irem, turning furiously on the weaver. “Those wild creatures are here! They are not searching for my child, and they are not doing anything but making silly eyes at one another and grunting! How can you say they’ve sent out searchers when they’re nothing but animals?” She looks at Fia in disgust, and once again turns her demands on Keiji.

“Keiji, my little girl is out there, all alone, without even her doll to comfort her. And now you are telling me that you will not organize a search party even though Foy and Nagge can take us to where she was four days ago!” Irem would continue ranting, but her husband, a generally taciturn man, puts his hand on her arm.

“Fia, I want to hear what Foy and Nagge have to say about Bian,” Jarrah says, his gravelly voice steady, but taut.

His wife shakes his hand off and turns her attack on him. “You want to hear more ravings from children!” she shouts.

“The only one I hear raving is you,” he replies.

His wife gasps with the indignity of his accusation and tears begin falling from her wide eyes.

“Minna’s children can tell us more about this,” Jarrah says softly.

“The only child who matters is ours!”

“I agree, Irem.”

“Then go find her!” Irem turns away, sobbing.

Jarrah looks helplessly at his wife, then turns to Keiji. “I will hear what the children have to say,” he repeats.

---

They find the children still at Minna’s with their troupe of small brown companions. Keiji hails the door and Minna greets them.

“Where is Irem?” she asks.

“Hysterical,” the headman answers shortly.

“I wish to hear what your children have to say,” Jarrah tells her. His deep voice is soft but urgent. Minna beckons them inside.

The children are seated in a circle of small brown creatures unlike any Jarrah has ever seen. Each creature looks the same, a palette of sepia dressed in an odd cloth of the same hue. Almond eyes turn curiously toward him as he enters the gathering room.

“You remember Jarrah,” Minna says to her children, and they both nod to the man in greeting.

“Nagge, tell me how it is you know the creatures are looking for Bian,” says Jarrah simply.

The sister’s smile is serene. “They have called their kin to tell them where she was, and to look for signs. The Tynan look for her traces even now, and will learn what has happened to her and bring her home if they can.”

“Explain,” Jarrah growls in his gruff voice.

The girl does not answer immediately. She turns her attention instead to the sepia circle and one graceful arm dances to punctuate the unfamiliar words she speaks. The brown eyes are fixed on her, but none of the brown creatures with sound or gesture of their own. She turns back to Jarrah.

“The Tynan can communicate over long distances without speaking aloud,” she says simply. “They have communicated with their brothers and cousins. Many of their kin search for signs of your Bian right now.”

Jarrah looks at the girl’s younger brother. Foy’s expression is faintly smug, but appears to hide nothing. “How do you know this is true?” Jarrah asks, directing his question to the boy. The young man straightens his shoulders and looks to his sister, who nods.

“They speak with their minds, and distance does not matter. They taught us how, too.”

“Show me,” Jarrah says. His firm request does not challenge Foy’s words, but asks for verification.

Again the brother looks to his sister. “Do you want to see how Foy and I can do this, or how the Tynan can?” The girl’s placid look relays her confidence.

“The Tynan are those creatures,” Keiji interjects, waving his palm toward the creatures impatiently. Both Nagge and Foy glance at the headman, then their eyes meet each other’s.

“I want to see the Tynan communicate without speaking.” Jarrah’s answer is decisive, delivered without hesitation.

“Mam, will you take two of our companions to Grandmama’s room?” Two of the creatures rise, one from the girl’s left and one sitting directly across from her. They walk to Minna and look at her expectantly. Wordlessly, Minna turns and the creatures follow her into the back rooms of the home.

The sister turns back to Jarrah. “You will want the Tynan to come back and demonstrate that they can communicate telepathically.” Jarrah nods. “You must tell me something for them to do when they come back into the room. Something I can describe to them.”

Jarrah nods again. “I wish one to draw the sigil for the rain. The other – I would like Foy to step outside with me. I will tell him what the other should do.”

Foy rises and walks through the entry to the outside. He stops a little way from the door. Jarrah follows him out. A few moments later Jarrah returns alone. He nods to the girl.

“Mam!” At her daughter’s call, Minna appears in the doorway. “We need a slate and chalk for drawing, please,” Nagge asks.

Minna locates a gray tray and places it on the table. She finds a chunk of chalk and sets it on the tray. “Is anything else needed?”

“Thank you, no. Please have our friends return now.”

Minna retreats again to the rear of the home and the Tynan appear in her place.

One of the small creatures immediately walks to Jarrah, looks into his eyes, then circles him three times. Turning his back to the tall farmer, facing the circle of his people, the Tynan raises his left arm to shoulder height then crooks his elbow in a salute, which he holds. Jarrah nods and returns the salute and the small creature resumes its seat with the others. Jarrah looks expectantly at the other Tynan.

The Tynan is examining the chalk stick curiously. He lifts it with two fingers, scratches it gently, then tastes the powder that has crumbled on his fingertip. He makes an experimental mark on the slate, then wets his finger and erases it. Quickly the creature makes several marks. He sets down the chalk and resumes his seat in the circle. The headman walks across the gathering room and picks up the slate. He holds it up for Jarrah to see. The sigil for rain, the tiny slanted lines in their staggered rows, are there on the slate.

Foy appears at the door, steps softly inside. He approaches Jarrah and asks, “Do you need more proof?”

The big man shakes his head. “Do the creatures –”

“Tynan,” Foy reminds him.

“Tynan. Do they write?”

“No,” Foy shakes his head. They use paint for art or for ceremonies, but they do not write. They have no need.”

Jarrah looks at headman Keiji. “I am satisfied,” he says. “I will tell Irem that they can communicate. But I must know more.” He is looking speculatively at Foy again, and at Nagge.

Minna brings him a cushion, and he sits between the children. “Tell me about the Tynan,” he requests solemnly.

The small band of brown ones, led by the tall young man and woman, huddle close together for comfort. They have allowed the adopted strangers to lead them to this strange place, with its wall too high and its gate too narrow. They have allowed the adopted strangers to persuade them that life would be better here. All they sense now is hostility, barely disguised beneath the curiosity the strangers have for their adopted ones.

The adopted sister speaks next. She speaks in the strangers’ odd sibilant tongue. She directs her words to the older female stranger, the one in red. The woman in red takes a hesitant step toward the sister, then two. Then the sister steps forward, but not before taking a child from the arms of its brown mother. She meets the woman with the child in her arms.

“They are not so different,” the sister says to her old mother. “This child sucks its thumb, dreams of growing up, and plays just as I did.”

Before the mother has a chance to answer, the stranger man speaks again. “Where are the adults? Have you stolen their children to bring the wrath of the elders down on us and our city?”

The sister laughs. “The others are small people. The adults are here. When they captured us, we did not know that they meant us no harm. In fact, they did not intend to capture us at all.”

“Then why did you not return home?” blurts her mother.

“That is a story best told over a meal,” the brother chides gently. He directs his remark to his mother, not to the man whose out-thrust chin demands answers. He knows that his reminder that he and his sister have been denied their mother’s table for three years should prompt the woman in red to act. He is right.

“Yes, come. Have them all come.” His mother speaks quickly, as though she is afraid she may change her mind if she is given time to think about her decision.

Curious strangers wander hesitantly toward the small band of brown ones. They stare, but keep a wary distance even as they pace the mother, brother and sister. The hostile man, muttering to himself, keeps up a few paces to the right of the troupe. Apparently he has invited himself to share the bread and stew at the mother’s table, too. Clearly he wants to know the story the brother and sister have to tell.

---

The mother’s home has a large gathering room, which is fortunate. The brother and sister have directed the odd little brown creatures to sit in a semi-circle on the thickrug covering the floor. The mother calls to her neighbor to please bring more bowls. The neighbor, who has come to see if she can help, ducks out quickly to comply.

It is the first day of the week, the day the mother traditionally makes her hearty stew and bakes her bread. It will take a week’s worth of bread to feed all these creatures, but the mother does not think of that. She only hopes she has enough. If she does not she will call upon her neighbor again.

The silence that descends is awkward. This mother has imagined her children’s homecoming so many times, but never has she imagined that it would take place in an uncomfortable quiet, broken only by the shuffling of brown feet and the shifting of ragged garments.

The mother ladles the stew and her neighbor, who has returned with a stack of bowls, breaks off pieces of the dense bread. The sister delivers each bowl to one of the brown creatures, murmuring something to them as she hands them the stew and bread. Taking her own bowl, she drops to the floor, cross-legged, next to her brother. The neighbor gives the mother the last bowl and steps back. The mother sits on the cushion facing her lost children.

She soaks the bread in the stew, but does not take a bite. The brown creatures and her children all look at her, expectantly. She notices that none of them have begun eating. Hastily, she brings the wet bread to her lips. Her children mimic her, then the creatures begin eating. The mother is amazed. The creatures seem to have understood that it was polite to wait until the hostess took the first bite before eating. She glances back at her children. Her son is smiling as he chews a bit of stew-soaked bread. Her daughter daintily sips the warm broth and meets her mothers eyes over the rim of her bowl. Silent amusement sparkles in her expression, and the mother looks away, startled. She has no appetite. She has too many questions.

Adjusting the red fabric of her garment, the mother sets her bowl on the floor in front of her cushion. “Will you tell me….?” she begins to ask, hesitant, not sure what, exactly, she wants to know first.

The boy, the younger of her children, speaks first. “There was a misunderstanding,” he begins, but is cut off by his sister.

“We lost ourselves,” she says quickly. “And while we were lost, these friends,” she gestures toward the brown creatures, “took us in. They did not want to, but we really gave them no choice. We were afraid.”

Her brother starts to speak, then thinks the better of it. He takes another bite of stew-soaked bread and chews, looking at his sister thoughtfully.

The outspoken man from the gate speaks up. He is just inside the door, as if he believes the brown creatures and these wild children carry a foul odor with them. His sneer is evident in his tone. “Why did you bring our enemies here?” he demands. “Have you joined them? Need we destroy you with them?”

“Keiji!” a voice from deeper within the house is sharp with admonition.

The angry man’s head jerks toward the voice from within, and his arms cross one another over his chest. He sticks his jaw out defiantly as an ancient woman appears in the doorway to the common room. Her arms are crossed in an echo of his.

“My daughter offers peace and food to these people, yet you come into her home to threaten them?”

“They are enemies!”

“It does not matter if they are from the stars or from under a rotting log. Minna has opened her home to them.”

“These creatures are evil, Ciannait, and you know it! You, of all people, know it!”

“I know nothing of the sort,” the old woman snorts. As she walks further into the gathering room, her spine is straight and she holds herself tall. “I know that Minna has guests, and I know you are being extremely unpleasant.”

The man glares at the old woman. “A band of enemies has invaded our town and as headman here I am demanding answers!”

The brown creatures are wide-eyed at the heated exchange between the angry man and the old woman. Understanding none of it they are not alarmed, merely curious. They look to the brother and sister, who have stopped eating and have leaned their heads together to whisper.

The sister rises gracefully from her floor cushion. “We will give you answers, Keiji. But first, our friends are hungry. We have traveled a long way and we are tired. And Foy and I owe the first answers to our mother.” She speaks gently, respectfully, but her words fall like heavy weights in the room.

Her brother, acting unaffected by the strong words of the elders, takes another mouthful of stew-soaked bread and chews it slowly. He turns and smiles encouragingly at the brown creatures, who also resume eating.

Clearly Keiji is at a loss for words for a moment. Then he attacks the sister with his hard words. “You owe this entire city an explanation. You disappear for three years only to return in the company of those who have been our enemies for generations! As headman I believe those answers should come now!” His left hand is on his hip and he shakes an enraged finger at the sister, who smiles sweetly at him, then turns to the ancient woman.

“Grandmama, are there two more bowls? Perhaps you and the headman should join us.”

The old lady winks at the sister in approval. Yes, child, I believe there are two more bowls. Thank you, dear,” she nods to the neighbor, who has handed her a bowl and a hunk of the dense brown bread.

“I don’t need food,” growls the headman. “I need to know what is going on.”

“You will, Keiji. Did you not hear the child invite you to stay?” The old woman’s tone is sharp, exasperated. “Now, please, sit.”

Minna brings another cushion and places it near the brother and sister. Kieji takes his seat, but waves away the bowl he is offered. He scowls at the sister, waiting for her to begin.

The sister takes her time, soaking the bread, sipping from the rim of the bowl, and saying nothing. “Your stew is even better than I remembered, Mam,” she smiles sat her mother.

“Yes!” agrees her brother enthusiastically. “We have missed it! And we have missed you and Grandmamma, too.” His nod and smile is directed at both women.

“We want to hear about you,” says the grandmother. “We believe it is a miracle that you are home with us again.”

“No miracle,” says the brother, his mouth full. “A mistake, but no miracle.”

“You said that at the gate,” Minna says to her son. “How could it be a mistake? Why have you been gone so long, and why, now do you return with your … companions?”

The brother begins to answer, but the sister clears her throat. The sound hushes him, and he settles back, waiting for her.

“The mistake is that we thought we had been captured. In reality, we had startled them as much as they had startled us.”

“Captured!” exclaims the headman. “So you were kidnapped by these vile creatures?”

“She said nothing of the sort, Keiji, if you will clean out your ears and listen!” snapped the Grandmother.

“I heard what she said. She said they captured them.”

“No, Keiji. We were not captured. In truth, they had no idea why we followed them back to their camp. But we did not understand that at the time.” The sister speaks slowly, as if to a young child.

“Then what did happen?” the head man is impatient.

“Foy and I were playing just outside the gate that day, and we wandered farther into the valley than we should have. What we learned later was that the group of Tynan who found us were scouting for food and for caves for shelter. They were planning to move their camp and were looking for a likely place. They had wandered farther into the valley than they should have, too.”

“Scouting for ways to attack the city, most likely,” snorts the head man.

“Not true,” the brother speaks up again, sounding rather cheerful, even amused.

“They could not understand why we followed them,” agreed the sister.

“You weren’t forced to go with them?” Minna is not eating, but listening intently.

“Then why did you go?” This is the neighbor speaking. She covers her mouth quickly, embarrassed that she has spoken out when this is clearly a family and political matter.

The brother turns to his mother’s neighbor and smiles. “We went because we thought we had been captured.”

“Bah! This makes no sense!” declared the headman. “Either you were captured or you weren’t. Which was it?” He has jumped to his feet again in frustration.

“It makes perfect sense,” retorted the grandmother. “The children thought they had been captured, so they went along with these others. They were mistaken. Is that right?” she nods toward her grandchildren, who nod back in return.

“Yes,” says the brother. “They did not mean for us to follow them, and they led us on a very long, roundabout trip back to their camp because they kept hoping we would get tired of following them and go back where we came from.”

“What makes you think that?” the headman growls.

“They told us so,” shrugs the boy. His sister nods.

“Told you so! That’s ridiculous!” the head man stomps to and from in frustration.

“No,” offers the sister with a wry smile. “Once we learned their language they did not mind telling us how silly they thought we were.”

“Language!” scoffs Keiji.

“That’s true,” laughs the brother, ignoring the headman’s outburst. “We have been teased about it ever since.”

“You mean to say that you learned how to communicate with these beasts?” Keiji is incredulous.

The brother and sister exchange a look. The brother rolls his eyes.

“Yes, Keiji. We learned their language.” The sister again speaks slowly and gently, as if to a child.

“Once you learned of the mistake, why did you not come home?” asks Minna.

“It took us a long time to understand how they communicate, and then to learn how ourselves. By the time we had the communication skills to understand and ask about going home, the camp had moved too far away. A large enough group could not be spared to escort us back. There was too much work to be done,” explained the sister.

“And the camps moved with the seasons, farther and farther away, and it was not until this cycle of seasons that we began moving closer again.” adds her brother. “But we knew we were close enough to travel back when we found a doll with a dress made of Fia’s weaving. “ He nods to his mother’s neighbor and beckons her to him. From under his tunic he brings out a small figurine wrapped in a soft, woven blanket. The neighbor gasps.

“It is yours, isn’t it, Fia?” the sister asks, and wordlessly the neighbor nods.

“Do you recognize the doll?” asks the grandmother.

Fia nods again. She has an indescribable look on her face, part awe, part fear. “It belongs to Bian, the daughter of Jarrah and Irem.” The mother and grandmother sigh, almost as one.

The brother nods. “I remember little Bian. One of the dogs must have stolen the doll and dropped it. But it was found two days’ walk from here.”

“Two days!”Fia exclaims.

“When was it found?” Keiji demands.

“Four days ago,” answers the brother. I spotted it when I was out with a group…” he trails off after a warning look from his sister.

Minna catches her breath and doesn’t notice the signal between her children. “Bian disappeared six days ago!”

Keiji is agitated, but not hostile like before. “Can you find the place again where you found this doll?” he demands. “And is it possible these creatures have her?”

“Have Bian?” the sister shakes her head. “We would know if Bian or any other child were found by the Tynan.” She turns to face the brown creatures, makes gestures and odd noises which are answered by the strange little creatures, then turns back to Keiji. “No child has been found. But they will look. The camp is only a half day’s walk from that spot, and if she is there the Tynan will do their best to locate her.”

Fia speaks, now, “I will run to get Irem!” and she is gone.

The sister again turns to the brown creatures. Again she makes the gestures, the odd sounds. After a brief exchange with three of them, she turns back to Keiji. “They have sent their scouts to look for signs of Bian. They will let us know.”

“They have sent their scouts already?” asks the grandmother. “How?”

“Ah,” smiles the sister. That, too, is part of the story we have to tell.”

“If we build a wall from the valley floor as high as we can reach and around on each side to the cliffs above us, we will be safe from the marauding predations of the others.”

We build the wall. It reaches as high as we can build it, and we begin it in the valley below, dodging the raids of the alien predators who resemble us but are so uncivilized. We wall ourselves into a ring of safety and we do not pass beyond it.

The others do not venture past our wall. They keep their distance, watching with wide eyes as we build our world away from them. One by one they disappear into the valley until no more are seen as we finish piling the rocks and mortaring them into place, building our wall impossibly high.

The others fade from memory and are the demons and villains only of the stories told by the grandfathers to the young ones, the threats of mothers to stubborn and disobedient children.

---

Two children play near the gate.

Why did we build a gate? We built a gate, of course, to prove we could leave our enclosure if we wanted. The wall is to keep the others out, not to keep us in. Besides, by the time the wall was finished, no one remembered why it was really necessary and we were tired of building it and we may have forgotten to finish it. Maybe this is not so much a gate but the incomplete last stone panel of the immense wall, abandoned in our arrogant certainty that the others were repelled at last by our daring feat of architecture and engineering.

The boy and girl are curious and have heard the stories of the vicious, mysterious other beings. None of those creatures have been seen in so very long. Grandmama says she saw them many years ago as a child herself. She says Mama has never seen them, though, because our wall is frightening to them and they do not come close now. They are right to be afraid of us, with our impressive wall and our civilization.

Surely there is no danger in just looking beyond the wall! The others have been driven away by their rightful fear of our superiority. They do not dare to come near our wall! The boy and the girl peek around the unguarded opening. They venture beyond, each daring the other to go further, then forgetting the danger as they play unmolested and unnoticed.

A pathway of sorts winds through the barren rock of the craggy hillside. They run along it, holding hands, then stop again to play. They have played for so long safely outside the wall that they forget there is a need to stay safe. They forget the stories of danger-and-terror-before-the-wall.

The boy comes upon a flat place that overlooks the valley and leads to another hill. He stands upon it, throwing out his chest like the bravest hero of battles, howling his superiority to the empty land beyond the whipping wind and throwing wide his skinny arms. His sister laughs and jumps to her place beside him. She strikes a mocking pose with one hand on her hip and a graceful arm outstretched to accept the adoring cheers of imaginary crowds. She bows deeply. Her brother laughs. The children jump from the rock to greet the throngs of their admirers.

In sudden panic they seize each other. The others have found them! They are beyond sight of the walls of safety. The others surround them!

The creatures are terrifying in their otherness. The children stand rigid for inspection, holding their breaths. The dirty, oddly shaped things come close enough to touch them, then shy away as if burned. They chatter rapidly with no words comprehensible to the ears of the boy and girl. The things retreat and appear to argue among themselves.

They are small, stooped, walking with leaping, crabbed steps from rock to rock. They are brown all over, brown eyes, shaggy dark brown hair, brown skin, dirty brown rags clinging to their skinny bodies. Their brownness makes each individual look like every other.

They are the others: the others who kidnap slaves and steal food and threaten the peace and are the reason for the wall. They are the unshaped creatures of nightmares and the stealers of babies and the evil of every story ever told. They are no bigger than the boy and girl.

The children take advantage of the others’ argument to look for escape. They must climb up to the place from which they had jumped into this horror. They cannot climb quickly enough to escape.

The brown things are quiet, watching the children with interest. Hearing the sudden silence, the children stop climbing. They look around and sheepishly climb back down. The others are before them, watching them in silence and stillness. The girl reaches for her brother’s hand.

The children sigh. They know they have been captured. They did not obey the warning of the wall and now are forced to live out the terrifying tales of children who disappear to the others never to go home again.

They hold hands, hang their heads, and step into the small group of brown people who will now make them over into uncivilized beasts unrecognizable by their mother and mold them into the stuff of the nightmares their friends will surely suffer.

---

The sister stops her work and turns, smoothing her dress.

“What is it?” asks her friend, tucking a strand of dark brown hair behind one ear.

“Something is happening,” replies the girl. Her friend turns to look over her shoulder toward the approaching men.

Another woman remarks, “They have found something.”

The group of men and boys comes closer, growing as it nears the small group of women. The girl sees her brother in the group, gesturing animatedly as he speaks to the leader. The men stop. The leader of the men questions the boy. He is insisting, and explaining again. He shows the leader the object he carries. The leader turns and stalks away in disgust.

The boy calls to his sister, “It is from home!” She drops her work and runs to him.

---

They have walked so long, and they have traveled up, up so far. The rocky path and barren landscape are indifferent to their passage. The people behind them do not speak unnecessarily. The occasional voice is shushed by a terse response. In the distance, green hills hold a mere suggestion of comfort beyond the reddish-grey line separating the valley from the heights. For now, the rocky path is all that exists for them.

“We are closer,” the brother says to the sister. She glances at him in exasperation.

“Of course we are closer. We are traveling in the right direction, aren’t we?”

He shrugs and they continue leading the small, tired, fearful group along the rocky path they have traveled only once before.

When the path ends in a pile of rocky rubble, the boy and girl look up. They exchange rueful glances. One playful leap at this spot so long ago changed so much. A shout from one of their companions directs them to another, smaller pile of rubble, easier for the young ones to cross.

The path continues upward; grass is determined to hold on to its place among the rocks on either side; scrub defies the odds and reaches maturity to gather the blowing dust. A yellow flower peeks from behind a red-gray stone dropped long ago by the builder of a wall.

---

The brother and sister walk hesitantly through the gap in the wall, followed by their tired companions. They now stop, wondering what will happen. They hear gasps from the others behind them.

Their eyes drink in the stone structures they have not seen in so long. No one notices them except two children sitting in the shadow of the wall who freeze in mid-play, gaping at the alien vision that has just invaded their normal world.

Then a woman cries out and rushes to collect the frozen children. All eyes turn upon the travelers.

Another shout, this time of question, not daring to know, disbelieving. The brother smiles to greet this woman.

The woman does not recognize this strange young man and woman before her, yet there is an underlying familiarity that has startled her question from her. She sees the others but does not look at them. The young man and young woman fill her eyes. She takes a tentative step toward them, but heeds the sudden warning called by a man. The young woman calls her by name. How does she know her name?

The man approaches the group of travelers carefully, hand and arm upraised as if to ward off attack by this soiled brown army led by the strange young man and young woman. He steps forward and barks his demand. The young man also steps forward.

The others stand still, imperceptibly shrinking from this onslaught of alien activity and confusion. A child buries its startled brown eyes in its mother’s shoulder and softly moans its fear.

The young man greets the older one by name in the language of the people behind the wall. “My sister and I have returned. Do you not know us?” He smiles. His mother utters his name, utters his sister’s name.

The others exchange furtive glances. These are two words they recognize. The rest is a babble.

“Do you bring an enemy to us?” demands the man. He stops a safe distance from the travelers.

“An enemy? An enemy with babies and old ones? What enemy uses its weakest forces to invade?” the young man says. There is strained laughter in his voice, which is rusty from not having spoken this language in so long.