‘What are you offering?’
‘Ten percent. I should make about three thousand a month, so that means they would make three hundred or more.’
‘Are you sure? Maybe they are afraid you will lose their money.’
‘Kostí, you have not asked all your friends.’
‘What are you talking about?’ His eyes widened. ‘Don’t tell me you have the money! How?’
‘I’ve been saving up for Leandro when I go to the army. Kostí, I’ve never forgotten how you helped me. I’ll give you the money if you promise me you will pay the three hundred every month to my uncle for Leandro.’
‘We’ll go to a lawyer and he’ll give you a contract that says I have to and that you have ten percent of the shop.’
‘I asked you for your promise. I know you’re an Albanian, but it is your word I trust.’
When, after the first three months, Kostí had not paid him anything, Thanos shrugged it aside and carried on saving. On the fourth month Kostí came looking for him and handed over five hundred.
‘You know how it is when you start a new business, it takes time to build it up. From now you will get your money every month.’ He was as good as his word and sometimes even exceeded the agreed three hundred. Thanos just saved the money, but he now started to have a small dream. The day he goes to collect his brother, he willd buy him a car. He hugged his dream to himself and it sweetened those difficult times when he wished he could do what the other young people do to have fun. As far as he was concerned, that kind of life was not for him, but he would see to it that his brother has everything he has missed.
He was seventeen when the old man who’d taught him to use the machine came to see him. They went to a coffee shop. He saw the old man’s hands were trembling.
‘Thano, you are a good boy. While you worked with me you helped me out many times, working extra when I was not feeling well enough to do my job. I’ve come from the doctor today, he says I have cancer and will die before the end of the year. I am an old man without any family. Thano, the apartment I live in, it is an ypogio (basement) flat, but it is mine. I want to leave it to you. Will you come with me to my lawyer for him to make the papers?’
That weekend he told Fivo about it. ‘You seem to live a charmed life. Your Albanian friend? If you had asked me I’d have told you, you are crazy to even think of giving your money to him, but he turns out to be the only honest Albanian I’ve heard of. Now an old man wants to give you his apartment! It must be worth at least fifty thousand Euros!’
Fivo would have had a fit if he’d known what Thano planned. He’d heard that the Teller family often go to Kefalari for coffee. He went there every evening and weekend until he saw them. He recognised them from the photos on television and the newspapers, but he was certain he would have recognised them anyway - to him, the girls looked like they were little goddesses from another world. He’d seen that the coffee shop is guarded by plain clothes policemen to prevent people going to speak to them. He waited until they left the coffee shop. As he saw them enter a small side street without anybody that he could see close by, he ran, shouting, asking them to wait, to please let him talk to them. Men ran out of gates of the houses in between and knocked him to the ground.
‘We apologise Kyrie Teller, we’ll take care of the problem.’
‘What problem? I don’t see a problem, I see a human being. Please let him go.’ Thano saw the stern look in his eyes and became afraid. Robert reached down and gave him his hand. ‘Come, you wanted to talk to us?’
The Teller family were amazed. They had never sensed a Normal with such an open mind. Without them trying they were hearing and feeling his thoughts. ‘How has he escaped our notice? This boy should have been made a Cherinian a long time ago.’ They promised to help the old man and then asked him whether he would like to become a Cherinian.
‘Could I wait please? I promised my mother we would both try to become Cherinians, I want to wait for Leandro.’
‘When it is time, call this number.’ Robert gave him a business card. ‘Relax and enjoy yourself for a change, you’re in Africa.’ They talked and teased each other, filling the air with soft sweet laughter and Thano lost his fears.
The old man was cured with the side benefit of being rejuvenated. Thanos shrugged when he was told he could not expect to have the apartment for many years. He was jubilant and could not believe how well all had turned out for him. He hid the card in his bedroom as if it were his most precious treasure, even though he had memorised the number.
He only had months to go before he would be drafted when Kostí asked him to come to the shop. He looked around, amazed that such a bare shop could have earned such good money.
‘I am selling this shop. Thano, my lover found me a shop for sale in Kifissia where I can charge a lot more because the people there are rich. He is lending me half the money to buy it and most of the rest I need I’ll get by selling this one. I want you to have ten percent in my new shop but it costs a lot more. Will you put another five thousand?’
‘You will pay Leandro double?
‘Of course.’
‘Agreed.’
As expected he was called up and served the full time he had to. Because of his expertise, the army placed him in a machine shop and he joked that the only difference was that now he had to work for free.
The day he was discharged, Fivo took him to a taverna and ordered a full carafe of wine and toasted him. He had come to love his proud and good nephew like a son. ‘Thano, your brother has finished school. He asked me whether I could help with his university fees. He has been accepted. The first son of our family to go to university!’
‘You told him you would?’
‘I will help you as much as I can Thano. I do not make much, but whatever I can.’
‘It will be enough. Fivo, what should I do? Should I meet him or should I wait until he has finished university?’
‘You must meet him. His father makes his life a misery.’
‘Can you arrange for us to meet…I don’t know where.’
‘Not in public, you will both need to be alone for a while. You know the psaro-taverna (fish restaurant) at the Delta? On the beach in front of it.’
They came face to face. ‘Leandro?’
‘Nai, Thano?’
‘My brother!’ He made to embrace him, but Leandro pulled back.
‘I hardly remember you. You don’t look the same as I remember.’
‘We’ve both grown.’ He laughed. ‘God! I can hardly believe how much you’ve grown! A real pallikari. I’m proud of you.’
‘Proud of what, that I had to grow strong to survive when my big brother left me? You abandoned both me and our father on the worst day of our lives.’
‘I had to, our mother made me swear I would leave even as she lay dying.’
‘Liar! Patera!’
A large man stood up from behind a fishing boat that had hid him. He walked over. ‘So, you have returned. Was it to come to our house to embrace us and call us family? No, it was to poison your little brother against his father with lies. Did you remember us once during all these years? Did you send us any money? No. You were rotten from the day you were born.’
As he came close and car lights flashed over them as they took the corner, Thano saw the rage he remembered so well on his fathers’ face. Before he had time to consider his options, his fathers’ fist hit him. After that, all he could remember was one pain after the other, both his father and his brother hitting and kicking him.
In a haze he saw his father leaning over him, panting, his face a mask of hatred. ‘Stay away from Leandro or else I’ll kill you.’
Thano was found two hours later by a couple who came out of the restaurant, wanting to walk on the beach for some kissing and whispers of love. The ambulance took him to the hospital and hours later a police car came to Fivo and he was told that Thano is badly injured. His heart a clenched fist of agony in his chest he rushed to see him.
A doctor explained to Fivo, ‘I’m sorry, but we do not think he will live the night. He has broken ribs and one of them punctured his lungs. His liver and stomach are also damaged from what we presume were kicks, causing internal bleeding. He will be entering surgery to stop the bleeding and to re-inflate his lungs, but the prognosis is not favourable.’
‘I want to see him.’ They allowed him to stand by his side for a few minutes as they prepared him to be moved to the theatre, tears falling down his unshaved cheeks. He turned to a police officer standing next to him.
‘Officer, have you arrested the man responsible?’
‘We were hoping you could tell us who it is.’
‘He went to the beach to meet his brother, I arranged it.’ He gave them details of where Leandros lives and went home.
Thano died about five minutes before Robert arrived.
Leandro was arrested and charged with murder. It made for a horrifying story, the public angry that a brother could kill a brother. Robert was advised that if he requested permission to meet the accused he would be refused. He went as a soul, saw the holding cell in the police station and returning to his body he jumped there.
‘Get away from him.’ The two men turned to see who had spoken and Robert, using his powers, knocked the men aside. He leant over and touched Leandro. They arrived on a beach in Cyprus. ‘Do you know who I am? I bring you a gift.’ Angrily he smashed through his mind and forced him to live the immediacy of the memories and emotions of Thano. When it was over, Leandro lay on the sand sobbing.
‘This will be your punishment. I will not link Thano until you are suitable to be linked as a Cherinian. It was what he asked of me and now it is up to you. Either your brother stays dead or I bring him back to be linked with the brother he loves. If you die before you are linked, then Thano stays dead.’
Emoting a cold anger Robert took him back to his cell. Ignoring the policemen he spoke softly so that only Leandro would hear, ‘Stop protecting your father. He is more or at least just as responsible as you.’
The police kept quiet about Robert’s visit, but announced the arrest of the father. They were both found guilty and Leandro was imprisoned for a term of fifteen years. He has been out of prison for a few years now and is struggling to earn a living. Thano has been dead for sixteen years.
The younger brother is watched by Robert. He desperately wants to bring his brother back to life, but he is too filled with pain and anger. He is still on his journey of freeing himself from the memories of his father and the evil he committed. We do not know if he ever will be ready to be linked as a Cherinian.”
* * * * *
Claudia reported that Sebura was in the audience among the Feshidi. At the end he stood up, nodded to her and walked away. I should mention, the reality Thanos belongs to is not the reality of Thina - and we have asked her to let us know what happens. It did spark arguments among us once we were alone. Many felt it was not right of that Robert to link the bringing back of Thano to his brother. Others agree with him. Efineh was upset, so Sam explained to her that since Thano will live for a very long time, perhaps thousands or even maybe millions of years, he will not begrudge the years he loses if they were needed to bring his brother back to him. His soul is in stasis and Robert has kept some cells for bringing him back. As for me, I would like to write the story of Leandro if he manages to become the person his brother was - even if not, surely that would be just as informative and important to us Cherinians. Among many Cherinians, our family at least, I think we are losing the ability to understand why and how fear, selfishness and other base personality traits can block the need and search for the finer qualities within us. Why do so many want to become Cherinians and yet fail? Is it truly just a lack of strength in character as some say? Is it partly mental laziness, evil and guilt being so much easier to give in to? Whatever, and I do know there are many reasons, even the way they meld, if we do not know, how can we empathise and use our empathy and compassion to help them grow?
The weeks go by, then the months, with small or big problems stealing most of our time, diluting Sam and her assistants of the pure concentration and devotion needed for teaching and opening hearts that we are here for. Since Sam is keeping herself at Cherinian levels of health, I decided she has no excuse this time, so I tackled her about it.
“We’d be able to help more people see truths they had not been aware of.”
“Is that what you think we are doing? All of you?” None of us are stupid enough to answer such a question, not when Sam asks, so we only stared back at her, knowing she would tell us anyway. “That might explain why we are failing to get through to so many.” She paused and then stressed her next words. “We are not here to teach them anything! We are here to remind them of what they already know. You only have to look at little children to see how much we forget as we grow up. Some forget because they don’t want to know as it would prevent them from achieving what they have decided they want, and others because life is hard so they do not have time to ask themselves questions that do not provide food on the table or protect their families. There are also those who shrink from allowing the knowledge to be a part of their lives because they have been hurt and making the truth a part of their lives would, they instinctively feel, leave them vulnerable to more pain.
If you cannot see that, then you are not able to and never will teach them enough to change the way they see the world, for you will not be countering the reasons that have blocked the knowledge from themselves. Do you truly feel that hammering the truths we offer will crumble their resistance?
I see that many of you do not believe me. Yet, you have all seen millions of examples, but you ignore them because you are not reaching into their hearts, only exuberantly trying to fill theirs with your own self knowledge. Tell me, why is it that even those who are totally closed to us try to teach their own children about being fair, not betraying friendships, feeling some empathy and compassion for others?
Immersing ourselves in the small and big problems they face ensures a number of things. Let’s examine just two. First of all it enables us to come to know what problems they have to face to survive, so that what we teach shows them solutions to their problems, not just some fancy theories of enlightenment. The second thing I was thinking of, it forces us to see them as human beings and not just faces we are trying to hammer our beliefs into. Each of them has their own path. Our job is to lead them back onto that path of theirs, not to force them onto our path.”
Some such truths seem self evident the moment they are uttered. Despite that, it took some breakthrough in our way of thinking for the huge difference in attitude and way of teaching that is demanded of us now, to soak into us. I admit two non-family receptions to her words forced us to think on them deeply. The one was Irfan. The other was the reaction of many aliens when we shared with them in Freddie. It is a problem we face often. When someone we are very close to sees a truth or tries to alter the way we see the world in a radical way, the familiarity blocks us, tempting us to only half hear them.
On another evening, after Sam had sat in and enjoyed listening to the discussions and debates in class, she ensured she would have supper alone with Efineh and Irfan.
“Irfan, have you read the New Testament carefully?”
“Yes, I have studied it.”
“What did you think of the way Jesus taught, as compared to most of his Disciples?”
He frowned. “I’m not certain I understand the question.”
She blushed. “To tell you the truth, I’ve read through some of the bible, but I have not studied it in depth. Perhaps I aught to? This is what struck me. Jesus taught by providing examples from the way people live, touching their hearts. He spoke of God as their Father, knowing that would make God a figure of authority while also helping them feel that God loves them. He did not concentrate on complex religious theories nor make much use of them, mostly speaking with compassion and love. The impression I get from reading what the Disciples said was that they were trying to flesh out a religion and give it ‘respectability’ by putting forward complex theories that would appeal to the educated and intelligent and bamboozle the rest of us. They wanted God and the church to be something mysterious and unknowable. Unfortunately, most priests prefer to emulate the Disciples instead of the Great Teacher and that is why Christianity has caused so many problems and suffering. If God is our Father and He loves us, which by extension means all other humans are our brothers and sisters and are loved by Him, do we need any complex theories to make us love Him and offer our lives and souls in return?”
Sam nodded. “I had a reason of my own for bringing up the subject. Irfan, you are strongly attracted to philosophies of the Far East. It colours the lessons you give and I find most of it effective and beautiful. However, the day will come that we will decide to tackle those who live in what we call Europe and Asia. In many ways the beliefs of the local Asians do not resemble those of our world and there are major differences. Be careful not to allow your fascination to consume all your attention, giving of yourself to the exclusion of all else. You and Efineh are here as a couple but, more critically, as partners. The responsibility is ultimately hers, but she needs your strength. She must know that you are by her side at all times. It is tempting for you to take the attitude at times that she is learning a lesson but, surely that implies you think of yourself as superior? If she has a lesson to learn, even if you think you recognise the truth, why not share the lesson with her? Perhaps you will find you also learnt something?”
Sam kept her promise to Gifexa. As chief administrator of his people he has certain duties that require his time for most of the day, but he devotes all his free time to talking with her whenever she visits them. She not only teaches him of what we believe in and what compels us, but also spends an equal amount of time in showing him how the qualities of a good, empathic and compassionate person improves and strengthens that person. She took it a step further and talked of a theoretical (at this time) city of Lake Orati, painting a picture he could understand, of what life would be like for all if they believe and live their lives as we do. She spoke of how relationships can be among male and female if they both learn to appreciate what is similar, what is different and how their differences and similarities strengthen and enrichen their lives as a couple and parents.
“Why do you speak this way for us Samantha, when I have seen that it is not so between you and Robert?”
Sam lightly blushed, but she talked straight. “In a way, you are right. In the ways that are important, you are not. We talked of how the needs of males and females differ and yet complement each other? The needs of Robert are different from that of most men and we pamper him for a reason. To most eyes, we are a patriarchal family, the man making the decisions and acting as leader of the family. The ways that it is so in appearance with us are only superficial, in all important ways we are split between being a matriarchal and patriarchal family. Why maintain the superficial ways if they are not important and make of us a bad example for others?
Allow me to digress for a moment. Let us say that you end up committing your life with your wives to being as I argue. When you are in meetings with your assistants or with officials from other countries, would they show respect by disagreeing publicly with your decisions?”
“I cannot see that happening, but I agree, it would belittle me in the eyes of those who depend on me to lead them wisely.”
“Have you never taken a problem with you to bed and found yourself speaking of it to your wife? Has she ever given you good advice? Is it honest to take her advice, but in front of other men claim she is only good for taking care of your home and children? When you make decisions for your people, do you do so for the men only, or do your decisions affect thousands of women and children? Women may not always understands what troubles a man, but they often have a different way of seeing things that you may like sometimes.” She grinned. “If you had me as your wife I would be a nightmare for you, for I do exactly that all the time, speaking my mind in front of everyone and arguing with Robert. Not only I. Should the youngest in appearance, Candy for instance, speak her mind, Robert would listen carefully, consider what she said and change his mind if he sees she was right - all that without feeling his position as leader of the Cherinians has been belittled in any way. It makes him proud when others show that they respect our opinions.”
“I have seen men in this city, as in others, who do not work. They allow their wife or wives to work all day, then expect them to return home and see to their comforts and prepare them meals or entertain their useless friends till late. They spend their days in idleness, only exerting themselves for the purpose of entertainment. So many of them also take the earnings of their wives and gamble and drink them away while demanding there be food on the table the next day. Then there are men who work hard, shorten their lives and take risks, sweating in the sun all day so that their wives and children have all they need. Tell me, should they look at the others and say, as you did, this is a difficult way and become as the worst of your people are?
Anything that matters, that is important to you being the best you can be, is hard. What is amazing is that when you achieve your potential and become the best you can be, you then find that it is not really hard, it is easy. Just as you, a man of pride, find it easier to be as you are, despite the hardships of working and being responsible, than to be as those who do not work and live off their wives. I agree with you about one thing. What is hard is learning to see what is right, for it is more difficult to be honest with ourselves than it is to be so with others. We, each of us, can only do the best we can while remembering it is an endless struggle, we can never say we cannot improve.”
Samantha is convinced that Gifexa will someday become a Cherinian. He finds much of what she says almost impossible to understand in anything more than a superficial way, but he tries. A good sign is that he has held many private talks with Ashema and other elders, learning of how they govern. He recently announced that he has split their country into regions with each region to appoint an elder to their council. They will meet once a year to discuss changes needed or problems any region faces. It is the first time the LOV Orati will have any say and it not only amazes them, but also frightens them, for they feel the city Orati are more advanced than they are. Our centre there is concentrating on teaching them that a good leader is a person who cares for his people and feels their pain, using his powers to improve life for all his people.
Sebura is still a bit of an enigma to us. We have not understood what the purpose of his travelling is. He rarely asks a question and yet he attends every lesson or talk. In the evenings he avoids the taverns where there is heavy drinking and coarse jokes, eating wherever those who wish to follow Samantha go. We’ve noticed that he watches and listens more closely when Haven talks. This came about by accident. He had not paid her more attention that to any of the others, but one day he was walking in town where there was a commotion ahead of him. A man was arguing loudly with his wife. He saw Haven walking by with a small group of Feshidi, stop to watch. The man hit his wife and when his son tried to stand between them he hit him also. Sebura saw Haven’s eyes turn cold and hard and he stared at her as if mesmerised by a cobra. Within a few quick strides she was by the man. Without speaking she attacked him. She walked back to her shaken group, her eyes still glittering like emerald ice, the man left lying on the street with a bloodied face.
A man standing next to him muttered, “She must be the daughter of the Fanged One!”
Thereafter he listened to her, but also followed if she walked within the town. If she ate and there was space close to her, he did not take it, he always sat where he could see and hear her without drawing attention to himself. Haven was aware of his interest but gave no indication that she was aware of him. Finally he asked a question. “You speak of what it will be like for those who follow your ways. Tell us what life will be like for those who prefer the ways of our fathers and refuse to obey you.”
“The ways of your fathers were changed by people like Klerisanamome and Hartinosomomersa. Do you mean your question as you asked it or did you mean the ways of the fathers of your fathers and of those before them? I’ll answer either way.”
He nodded. “The way of our ancestors.”
When you speak of our ways, what do you mean? What are our ways? Do we demand that you accept us as demons or gods that you must obey? Surely you have understood that we do not? We ask nothing of you, all we offer is to remind you of the person you were as a child so as to become once again the person you can be. We do not ask that you become weak. If you are a strong and brave man, we ask that you use your strength to help and protect those who are weak, instead of terrorising them and stealing the little they have. We ask that when a man is your enemy, remember that he too has the same feelings, needs and fears you have and try to learn all you can about him. Most of the times you will find that you are enemies because of a misunderstanding or because of fears he has and if you meet to talk, you will find a fair solution to the problem and turn him from enemy to friend. Are you not wealthier with each new friend you make? Where such an enemy is only an enemy because greed has made him want to take what you have by force, then it is your duty to fight him.
I ask those who prefer selfishness, greed and everything we talk against, what about those who open their hearts and learn what we are teaching, how will they react to you? How can they react? If you are ill, they will try to heal you. If you are hungry, they will share their food. If you try to steal or take what is theirs or harm those they love, they will fight you.”
“What of the man who does the good things you ask of us because he sees a rightness to them, but he does not love?”
“There are many like that. You do not know what happens to such men and women? They wake up one day to discover they are loved. It means little to them until one day one heart reaches out to them and touches them. That was what I was like for a long time, until hate did not rule me anymore. One heart touched mine and when I looked back and saw for how long I had closed myself to love, I grieved for the fool I had been.”
“You are of Samantha’s family, but you hated? How is that, tell us your story.”
“It is not time for that. Maybe someday.”
A few days later Haven passed close by. She left the group and put her hand to his arm. He followed her. “I have not forgotten your wish for my story, but it is not time. Someday when your people do not believe in demons anymore, I’ll tell it.”
“You know who I am?”
“I know that you are a man troubled with thoughts and questions, but you rarely speak. If you ask whether I know your name, no, I do not.”
“Samantha has not told you?”
“Sebura? I did not expect it to be you. If I tell you something about myself, will you respect my wish to keep it secret for now?” Without giving him time to promise she continued. “I am of those people whose world was blown to pieces. I hated those who killed my people and when I saw Robert helping them and he declared them to be under his protection, I killed Cherine.”
“You killed her!?”
“Yes. Robert made me a prisoner, gave me this body and forced me to live with them. It was Robert that touched my heart, though Empathia was the first to love me.”
“I felt you are different. Someday I will return to talk with you, I feel you have much to teach me. Goodbye.”
Haven shook her head. “No, I cannot unlock it. Perhaps I can help him understand, but I cannot show him how to love. I do have an idea though.”
It took us four days. The first we spent in Freddie arguing the pros and cons plus the ethics of what we wanted to do. Samuel King sat by us with just the hint of a smile for he was aware that Samantha was monitoring him. She sort of considers him our barometer when we are dealing with grey areas in ethics and if she feels he disapproves she’ll leave our discussion and sit by herself to take a long hard look at herself. Sometimes, like this time, he gets ornery and blocks himself off and amuses himself by watching Sam get frustrated at not being able to sense him. He has tried telling Sam not to look to him, that he is not more ethical than anyone else but she refuses to listen to him. Her irritation at his blocking himself (and, I suspect his half-smile) was to lead to her making a decision that irritated him almost to the point of anger - but I’ll write of that in the correct chronological order when she implements her decision, or maybe she’ll write.
By the second day we had given ourselves the go ahead and refined the plan to the degree we could without having the specific personality and character of the person we needed to involve. Now began the search. It took just over two days! On our Earth it would have taken minutes or at most just hours. We found an orphan of just over three years old who was not wanted by her relative - a cousin twice removed. She is an Orati from a town outside the lake city.
We created three doppelgangers, Orati in appearance. A father, a mother and one other who could have been a friend or a servant. Two hours ahead, in the direction Sebura was riding, we strewed evidence of belongings looted, placed the badly wounded doppelgangers and gently deposited the child after smearing the back of her clothes with blood (the back so that she could not see it). At first she was puzzled by the change in her environment, then she grew afraid as her calls were not answered. By the time Sebura arrived she had been sobbing for some time and looked a mess.
Sebura heard sounds of a child crying and sniffed as the scent of blood reached him. An Orati rider is too proud to scout ahead by creeping and hiding behind bushes to see what awaits him. He prepared his weapons and with spear in one hand and a long knife in the other he rode into the clearing. He saw the child but ignored her as he looked for signs of a trap. After he had circled the area and identified the tracks of the assailants as they carried away their loot, he returned. The mother was beyond speaking, only her eyes beseeching. The second man was dead and the father was holding his stomach as blood seeped through his fingers.
“We are Orati, from the lake city. Have pity Feshidi warrior and save our daughter.”
“Who attacked you?”
“Soldiers, deserters. Our daughter, please.” Blood dribbled out of his mouth. “Take her to the border and give her to a rider to be brought up as an Orati.”
“The border is far away.”
“She’ll die if you leave her here. She is all that matters to us, let us go to join our ancestors with the comfort of your promise.”
“I’ll take her. May our Mother hold you and your woman in her arms.”
Within minutes the parents died. The child sat on the ground, her eyes filled with fear as she stared at him. He saw the blood on her clothes and stripped her to see where she was wounded. He did not find a mark on her and dressed her again.
“What is your name?”
The flies were pestering her because of the blood on her clothes, so he took her to a stream and washed her clothes as she happily played in the water. In the heat of the day it would not take long for her clothes to dry so he unpacked some food and shared it with her. She was not disconcerted by his silence for she was not used to adults talking to her. He dressed her and placed her before him on the horse. We were surprised to see that he had no intention of returning to the city. He continued in the direction he’d been travelling, only more alert now in case her parents’ killers were close by.
They rode for four days with Sebura hardly speaking a word to her. During the first night he woke up with his knife in his hand. He identified Pirusi’s little body as being the cause and let her lie against him. The next three nights she was too tired to wake up out of fear or to move. On the fourth day Sebura saw signs of a village ahead. He wanted to hunt so as to arrive with meat to offer in return for their hospitality. The problem was Pirusi, he could not hunt with her and he could not leave her alone. He climbed a tree and tied her to the trunk where it forked so that she could sit, and sternly warned her not to move and to keep quiet. He returned hours later to find she had soiled herself and her face was streaked with tears. He was not annoyed as he realised she was not to blame and carried her to a stream to wash her and her clothes. He washed the blood off himself after tying the buck onto his horse and they walked to the village.
He had difficulty in understanding what they said, but his ear adapted within hours. He was welcomed cautiously, but they did show pleasure at his thoughtfulness in providing meat, so they sat in a circle and drank their equivalent of beer while Pirusi was taken by a woman to play with other small children.
“The child is different.”
“She is Orati.” He explained how he found her.
“You can leave her here.”
“I promised to take her to the land of the Orati.”
He soon came to the conclusion that they have not heard of Samantha and that they are not really believers of the Fanged One, only pretending such belief when soldiers pass through. He spent the next two days talking with them, asking many questions. Even to an Orati rider some of their customs and beliefs sounded cruel, but he acknowledged that there were practical reasons for them. What did amaze him was that such a backward people have many admirable qualities, many of them similar to the Orati but also to what Samantha teaches. They gave practical reasons for those also.
“If a hunter is crippled, do you feed him and his family or do you kill him and another man takes his family as his own?”
“A hunter of our village? If he is crippled and there is nothing else he can do? We do not kill our crippled and old people as some savage tribes further north do. There is always something they can do to make our work easier, even if only to help the women. Do your people kill them?”
They warned Sebura that if he travels further north he will be in danger once he passes down to lower lands where the big rivers meet. The cruelties they spoke of did sound frightening, but Sebura was confident he can handle the danger. This might be a good point to mention that we were monitoring Pirusi all around the clock. We would never allow her to be harmed.
The land was dry grass mostly, waiting for a fire to start. Sebura was careful to clear the area he lit fires for cooking and then covered them with soil when he was finished. They entered and followed a rift, maybe a few hundred metres wide, so as to remain close to water. It was now nearly a month since Sebura had found Pirusi and she had grown tougher and leaner. Often when they camped for the night, he would point to a tree or rock and tell her to run to it and back again. He extended the distance gradually as her stamina improved. He would often, during the day, dismount and walk for a long time, poor Pirusi suffering at first. Within weeks she was able to walk for extended periods. We were puzzled as to his reasons, since it is not customary for riders to expect their females to be as hardy as them.
