The Sicily Chronicles

9230 B.C.E.-4

“Others, too?” she had asked.

Anutu only shrugged his shoulders at her question.

Folu sat working on a new cloak for Tano. He had brought her a deer hide, one that he managed to scrape from the downed animal two days earlier. The deer meat had already been consumed, but it was time to scrape and prepare the leather before it became stiff and brittle.

Folu left the outside coat of fur on the pelt but turned it over on her lap to inspect the underside. It was mostly finished – the villagers didn’t like to leave edible muscle fibers stuck to the hide – but she had to pull some fibers and scrape the surface gently to make it as smooth as possible. It was important for her to make this covering comfortable to wear against Tano’s bare skin, so any imperfection in the hide should be removed.

When the task of cleaning the underside was done, Folu reached for a slender, finger-sized bone fragment taken from the same animal. This bit of antler came from the very tip, the narrowest diameter, and had been rubbed, scraped, and polished until it could serve as a type of needle. In one end of the antler bone, Folu had created a hole using a very hard stone sharpened at the end, digging in a circular motion until a depression was created on both sides. Persisting in this circular motion, then turning the bone over to repeat on the other side, she slowly bored a hole that sinew could be passed through.

She put the pelt back on her lap and, using the pointed stone tool, pressed and pushed on one end of the hide until a hole was made. She repeated the action at a point of the hide opposite the first hole until she was satisfied with the result. Then, retrieving her antler-bone needle, she passed a long strand of animal sinew – taken from the same animal that yielded the hide and antler – through each hole. With these in hand, Folu rose to her feet, turned toward the tree branch behind her, and strung the pelt up on the branch by these threads. There, the deer that had brought the villagers meat, leather, sinew, and needles, would hang until the prepared hide was dried out and ready for use.

Meals took hours to prepare. Flour would be ground for bread which then needed to be baked, root vegetables and other tough edibles needed long hours at the edge of the fire pit to cook through, and meat – whether it was going to be grilled over the fire or roasted in a pit – took considerable time to clean and prepare. And meat was not always available. The hunters were out most days, so the catch may be consumed before two sunsets, but any surplus was cut into slivers and hung to dry, so the moisture in the meat would not be a breeding ground for maggots or bugs.

Fish was a staple of their diet, since the island of Fansu was small and had a long shoreline. And this night, some small octopus and squid were part of the meal. Each was sliced into mouth-sized pieces and tossed into a heated clay pot greased with animal fat. The pieces sizzled and popped in the heat, and delicious aromas rose into the air, making stomachs growl and faces smile.

When the food was consumed, they people relaxed around the fire. There were no earth tremors to frighten them on this night, but the memory was still fresh. There was more talk this evening about the gods spitting red fire into the air.

“What do they want?” asked Nanda.

“Huh,” grunted Tano. It sounded like a muttering of disgust, and Lotya quickly corrected him.

“The gods are here,” waving his arms to indicate all of nature that surrounded them, “It is not for us to ask what.”

“What do we do?” asked Nanda.

Baia shrugged her shoulders and tried to formulate an answer. Anutu looked at her and waited for what his woman would say.

“They argue and fight,” Baia said, and then laughed, “sometimes like you and me,” she said, looking at Anutu.

He only smiled.

“They fight,” he then added, “they fight here,” pointing to the ground, but spreading his pointed finger to indicate the entire island.

“We go,” Lotya concluded.

Those around the fire agreed, some nodding their heads or sitting in silent acknowledgement. Their little island, Fansu, seemed to be a battleground for the gods. It sat very near another island, Ganta, so big that it hid the rising sun each morning. To these people, the gods were not supernatural beings that watched from afar; they were natural and they inhabited the concrete world around them.

But these powerful beings, so great they could whirl through the air or creep along under the ground without being seen, were known to the people only by their actions. To the tribe of Anutu and Baia and the others, angry gods acted in heat, wind, and tremors.

* * *

In the early morning air, Tano stepped out of the portal of his new hut, turning once to peer back at Folu. She was awake, rubbing her belly to dispel the pains she felt, but otherwise showing no signs of distress.

He planned to go to the place where the stream met the big sea and cast his net into the water for fish. He reached down to the folded net that was kept just beside the hut and hoisted it over his left shoulder. It was soft to the touch, the braided fibers from the tree bark having been moistened and made pliable by daily immersion in water. Shifting the net to balance its weight, Tano walked between the shelters in his cluster and down toward the water’s edge.

The village was built far enough from the sea to avoid the water that rose and fell twice edge day, but close enough that fishing on the edge was still within sight of the people tending morning fires. When Tano arrived at his chosen spot on the shore, he greeted an older man who was already there. Farutu was seated on a large rock that straddled the lapping waves and he held onto two ropes, one in each hand. He kept his arms spread so that these tielines would keep the mouth of his own net open for the schools of fish that played about in the water.

Farutu sat in Tano’s favorite spot, but the villagers didn’t feel like they possessed the land and so fishing spots were claimed by those who arrived first. Tano nodded to Farutu, who returned the greeting with “Seeio,” this village’s way of saying hello.

SeeioTano moved to a place where there was an elevated dropoff into the water and set down the wooden bucket he had used to bring water to construct his hut. He then pulled the net down from his shoulder and spread it wide on the ground to his right. Standing with his left shoulder pointed to the water, tielines in his hands, he reached up with this left hand first and, in synchrony, tossed the net into the shallow water below his feet.

Waving his hands a bit caused the net to wave in the water, an action that would attract the attention of the small fish by the shore. After about twenty seconds, Tano drew his hands in toward his body and grasped the tielines together, swiftly yanking the net out of the water. A few fish flopped on the ground next to him, tangled in the net and gasping for the air their gills sought from the water.

Tano picked through the net to grab hold of the fish, tossing them one by one into the bucket. Their silvery scales were slick and he had to have a sure hold on the thing, or else it would slither back into the water. Having thus freed all those in his catch, he picked up the net and prepared to repeat the process.

He continued in this way, listening as the sound of the little fish flapping in the bucket died down with each layer of catch he threw in. Within an hour, Tano had collected more fish than they could consume that day, but it wouldn’t be wasted. Folu knew how to dry some and others could be traded with the villagers in exchange for tools or other foodstuffs.

When Tano picked up his net and bucket, he saw that Farutu was still sitting on the large rock by the shore. The old man had caught some fish but didn’t seem too concerned about sitting longer and collecting less. Tano raised his bucket in Farutu’s direction.

“Some?” Tano asked, suggesting that he could share with his fellow fisherman.

Farutu smiled and nodded his head. He was a master at crafting arrows by stripping the green skins of the bamboo shoots that crowded the forest near the village. He also knew which trees yielded the best wood for the bows that would launch his arrows. So Farutu could barter for fish; catching them was more of a pastime.

Tano turned and walked back into the village. When he presented the bucket of catch to Folu, he could see that she was even more uneasy. She rubbed her belly more, and occasionally reached her fingers down between her legs with a look of concern on her face. Rather than ask her to deal with the fish, Tano went in search of women who could help her, since no man could understand what to make of a woman who delivered a baby.

In a moment, he returned with both Baia and Nanda, and the women immediately knelt beside the pregnant woman.

“Hurt,” Folu said, grimacing and touching the area between her legs.

Baia reached her hand into the same spot and, retrieving it, saw that her fingers were wet. She showed them to Nanda, and both women knew the time had come. They spread some straw on the ground next to Folu, bunching it up to form a cushion against the rocky ground. Baia then stretched a large leather pelt over the straw, and she and Nanda helped Folu slide across from her mat to the pelt.

“Stand, yes?” asked Nanda.

Folu looked surprised by the suggestion. She had never given birth before and wasn’t prepared for this part.

“Yes, stand,” Baia repeated. They helped the woman to her feet, groaning, who now wondered why they had made a bed so soft if she had to stand.

“Now, down,” said Nanda, pressing her right hand gently on Folu’s shoulder, guiding the younger one into a crouching position. Baia was behind Folu, helping her rest her body against her and remain slightly elevated above the ground, while Nanda moved around to the front the deliver the baby.

Tano remained on the periphery of this event, fear etched in his expression. He had never been this close to childbirth before, but he was well aware of the dangers and knew that many of the village women had not survived the experience.

At first, Folu cried a bit and grunted, but then she fell very silent. Tano saw that she was still conscious and still working to push the baby out, but a calm came over her just as the baby was approaching delivery. A sudden action by Nanda caught his attention and he peeked over the midwife’s shoulder to see a wet, pink baby cradled in her cupped hands. A cough, and a sputter, and the baby’s toothless mouth opened wide in a tiny cry.

Baia couldn’t see from her spot but read the events correctly. As soon as the baby was out, she lowered her support so that Folu could sit down on the hide, then lay back in repose. Nanda placed the still wet baby on Folu’s chest, then examined the white and blue-veined cord that connected the newborn to the mother’s innards.