Guardian of Heaven and Earth
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Kanbal
Part 2 - Disturbances in Nayugu
Chapter 4 - the Marriage of the Spirits
Kassa felt the solution of togal and water press into his closed eyelids.
“There we go. You can open your eyes now,” Yoyo the herder said.
Kassa opened his eyes. Usually, the caves were too dark for Kassa to see anything, but now there was a faint light over everything, like the cave was illuminated by starlight.
“Can you sense anything? Or see anything?” Yoyo asked. His tone was strangely apprehensive.
Kassa cleared out his ears with his fingers, then opened his eyes wide. Yoyo had told him that he’d sensed something strange in the caves this winter. Kassa hadn’t noticed anything, but he wanted to at least try to see and feel what Yoyo did.
But Kassa didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. He shrugged a little sadly. “I’m sorry, Yoyo,” he said. “I don’t see anything.”
Yoyo sighed. His father, Dodo, stood beside him and shook his head slightly.
I should have expected this. I guess Kanbalese people really can’t see it.
Yoyo looked up at Kassa, who was much taller than him now. Yoyo felt the difference in their heights like he felt the separation between their peoples. The herder people were born in the very heart of the mountains and dwelt in them; the people of Kanbal’s clans spent most of their lives on the surface of the earth or the mountains in the sun.
I wish that Kassa could understand...
Events that happened in Noyook wouldn’t only affect the herder people. Kassa had to understand exactly what was going on so that he could warn his clan. His uncle Kaguro was the head of the Musa clan. If Kassa could convince him to act, many lives might be saved.
If things kept going as they were, with the people of Kanbal remaining ignorant of the change of the season in Noyook, there would be an epic and irrecoverable disaster.
“How about if we try showing him the lake?” Dodo asked.
Yoyo nodded cautiously. “Good idea. Maybe he’ll be able to see that.”
Dodo took Kassa’s hand and led him deeper into the cave. Yoyo walked out ahead of them. Kassa had a deep and personal fear of the caves, which were guarded by hyoulu, guardians of the darkness. Kassa had seen the hyoulu as a boy and had never forgotten his terror of them. Kassa followed close on Yoyo’s heels, staying close to his friend. His shoulders shook slightly.
There were many thin and winding branches in the caves; it was easy to get lost without a guide. After a few minutes of twisting and turning, the path spread out into a wide open space with a smooth underground lake. It was so large that it was hard to make out anything on the other side of it. Kassa took a few cautious steps closer to the lake, then stood still.
“Take a good look,” Yoyo said. “Can you see any ripples on the water?”
Kassa concentrated hard. If he looked very closely at a single spot, he could see ripples: lots of them, emerging from a single source beneath the water’s surface. He had seen bubbles rise to the surface and cause ripples in swamp water before, but he saw no bubbles in the lake, only ripples.
But what was causing them? He couldn’t tell. It was like there was something in the water that he couldn’t see.
But Yoyo and his father could see it. The ripples weren’t caused by any creature of Sagu, but by spirits of Noyook. They danced along the surface of the water in a strange and ancient ceremony that the herder people called the marriage of the spirits.
There were spirits that looked like fish, lizards, snakes, and other animals, all moving around one another in the dance. The spirits danced in the warm water of Noyook. They had flowed down Noyook's river from the ocean into the heart of the Yusa Mountains more than a month ago now, dancing around one another in a strange ceremony.
The spirits didn’t simply dance on the water, but on the walls of the cave as well.
They’d been dancing for such a long time. Time in Noyook and time here must work differently, Yoyo thought. Toto the Elder had told him that the dance would likely continue for several more months. Since that first night when Yoyo had seen the spirits coming up the river of Noyook into the mountains, the Titi Lan had completely disappeared. No one had seen them after that night.
The Herders knew the Titi Lan’s ways and habits better than anyone, but all they really knew was that they hunted late at night on their weasel mounts. The Herders didn’t know where they could have gone. Toto the Elder said that the Titi Lan were ruled over by an ancient queen, and that once she reached the end of her life, she took a mate and gave birth to the next queen. All of the Titi Lan vanished into the mountains to celebrate this ritual. The marriage ceremony of the Titi Lan queen hadn’t been witnessed by anyone in living memory.
I’m sure the Titi Lan are starting their marriage ceremony now. The time of the spirits mating in Noyook and the Titi Lan’s marriage ceremony seem to be closely connected.
Toto the Elder claimed that the Herders had once been closer to being like the Titi Lan than they were now. “A long time ago, the Herders came out of the depths of the mountains and remained on the surface of the earth. Over time, we lost our mountain-senses and became more like the Kanbalese people. It is spring in Noyook now. Don’t forget what that means.”
Toto had told Yoyo and the other Herders many legends concerning spring in Noyook. They would see now how many of them were true.
“What’s causing these ripples?” Kassa asked.
Before Yoyo could answer, the ground beneath his feet began to shake. He felt like there was an enormous creature under the earth, burrowing just under his legs.
“Watch out! The rock will collapse in on itself!” Yoyo’s father Dodo called out.
Yoyo and Kassa jumped back as the rock fell out from under their feet. More rock fell from the ceiling, streaking dust and dirt through the air.
“Jump in the water!” Dodo yelled. He pushed Kassa and Yoyo forward so that they fell into the lake. One of the falling rocks hit Kassa in the skull. He went limp and swallowed too much water.
A few moments before the cave-in, a group of women worked busily in a weaver’s hut on the mountain. It was an unusually warm day, for winter. Gina would have loved to play outside on such a day, but she was getting older, so she usually wove with her mother every day. Her brother Kassa had gone out with the Herders that morning. He’d seemed very secretive. Gina wondered if he’d tell her what he’d seen when he came home.
She asked her mother about a particular line of weaving that looked crooked. Her mother righted the line, then struck up a conversation with Yoyo’s mother, who was sitting across from her.
All of a sudden, all of the Herder women stopped speaking. They set their weaving aside and looked at one another. “Did you hear that?” Yoyo’s mother asked.
The Herder women nodded. Their faces went pale from fear. The Kanbalese women appeared puzzled and looked at the Herder women with expressions of concern. Yoyo’s mother stood up from her chair and went outside.
A few moments later, she returned and threw the door wide open. “Everyone! Get outside! Hurry!” she yelled.
The Herder women mobilized as quickly as if they were preparing to chase a runaway goat. The Kanbalese women followed them, still confused, clasping their youngest children in their arms as they ran.
The Herder women opened up all of the goat pens and chased the animals out. “Look there!” one of the Herder women said.
Gina looked where she pointed and froze in shock. A wave of snow coursed down the mountain in the largest avalanche she’d ever seen. It was headed right for the goat pens and the weaving hut.
“Avalanche!” several women shouted together. They gathered their children more tightly to their chests and started running. The goats ran in front of them, bleating in fear.
The avalanche advanced behind them like a crashing ocean wave. Stone homes were crushed as it consumed them. The goat pens were completely smashed; the weaving hut was buried completely. The Herder women picked a path to avoid the worst of the avalanche; the Kanbalese women followed them closely, still panicking. Not all of the women escaped from the enormous wave of snow.
When the avalanche finally ended, the women looked at one another with relieved glances. They backtracked a little in the hopes of finding their friends in the snow and retrieving their weaving, though there didn’t seem to be much hope in either case. Without the advance warning of the Herder women, they would all be dead.
That's ominous.
ReplyDeletePoor Kassa ...
Changes are definitely happening in Nayugu...most of them won't be good for the people on the northern continent.
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