Locust Girl: A Lovesong Read online

  ‘My fires protect the border!’

  Minister Ycasa whirled her chair, laughing. ‘I never get tired of your bickering, but we have to gather our natural bearings before he arrives.’

  Her last words forced the men to give up their quarrel, though reluctantly. They whirled their chairs, they all looked up and quickly the ceiling opened as if their eyes had pushed it into the sky. The sun streamed into the room, striking colour everywhere. The ministers’ clothes turned purple, their chairs grew leaves and branches and rose to the sky. They bore white fruit with a scent that was both gritty and aromatic. Ah, the oil of oils.

  ‘Yes, let’s restore the natural order, Ministers,’ the woman laughed.

  All sat high up on their own tree now, and began sprinkling it with a whitish powder that stirred an old memory. ‘Blessed,’ I heard in my head as the trees whirled and rose even higher into the sky. The powder was sprinkled beyond them and a field of wirra sprung from the floors and began ripening. My whole skull whirred, I felt the urge to feed, but my chair sprouted leaves and branches that bound me. I could not reach the closest grain. My mouth grew thick with saliva and something else that rose from my throat. I was retching even before I had fed. Then it broke out of my lips —

  ‘A seed for a song, my dear

  And oil to grease the throat’

  I was singing? I was singing!

  ‘What outrageous production is this — get down, all of you!’

  The biggest head that I had ever seen emerged from the fields of grain. It looked up in dismay at his bickering ministers who whirled their trees about as if with some ill wind, then whirled them down, back to the level of the table. The leaves and branches drooped before the censure of the Honourable Head who sat on the remaining chair.

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.’ The Head rested tiredly on his hands that seemed to be having a hard time holding himself up.

  ‘Why? We’re getting results. She sang and I think we’re on to something,’ the Minister of Mouths said, certainty in his voice. ‘There are secrets in that song from the other side, secrets that need to be unlocked and monitored.’

  ‘Why must we go through this circus? The plague was confirmed years ago. It didn’t have to go through the border. Why was her route not blocked in the first place?’ The Minister of Arms waved his fists about. The grains shivered.

  ‘I have monitored all walkers, I have steered them away from here, I did my job!’ The Minister of Legs thumped the table, sending leaves flying about. She was not laughing now. Had she not composed the Five Kingdoms’ songs of transport and passage with precision?

  ‘Ycasa, my dear, it’s not you that’s the problem.’ The Minister of Arms glared at the Minister of Mouths who rubbed his throat before belting out the famous lines:

  ‘No one should look

  No one should walk beyond the horizon’

  His song primed his speech. ‘You see, I’m the one on your side, my dear woman. I have sung those lines with devotion, I’ve disseminated them to the world to assist your occupation, Minister — you have kept us all in our rightful place, with the aid of my songs, of course,’ he said, smiling at the irate Ycasa. ‘But I think our songs have been challenged — mocked and trampled upon at the other side, while some people simply looked on.’

  ‘Some people?’ The Minister of Arms was ready to hit the smug singer. ‘I did my job, I dispatched the fires, you prick!’

  ‘Watch your language, Minister,’ the Honourable Head scolded.

  ‘Yes, dispatched your fires to a village wedding? How heartless, dear Xuqik.’

  ‘The signal was clear — they were walking to the border!’

  ‘Shut up!’ The Honourable Head finally silenced his ministers. The Honourable Zacarem was older than everyone and smaller, except for his head that thought for all the Kingdoms. It seemed to be aching with too many cares today. He buried it deeper in his hands. His next words were muffled by despair. ‘What has become of you, of us?’ But maybe I had misheard him, because my voice was finding its own words:

  ‘If the feet itch for distance

  Does the head know?’

  ‘Do I know what — are you asking me, are you singing, girl?’

  Everyone froze. I did not mean to interrupt him like that, but my throat had grown a will of its own. The Honourable Head was looking at me now, his tiredness quickly displaced by censure. No one had ever challenged him before. ‘It is she who sings! Not that rumoured thing — not that mark. Where is it anyway? Where is your plague?’ he asked.

  The ministers argued in response, cutting the air with words that took me back to the desert. Rumour. Plague. Border. Fire. Stories jostled each other in my head. I saw my father walking under the stars. I saw the stars shot down, burning the earth to greater dryness. I heard rumours of water, of trees, of colours. I heard Inige’s words. I echoed them. ‘Rumour. The crime of hope.’

  ‘What did you say?’ one of the ministers asked the others.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ the others chorused, then all turned to me. But I didn’t say anything else again. I sang.

  ‘Meet me over there

  My left foot says to my right

  Where there still lies

  A wee quiver of life’

  The Honourable Zacarem crawled onto the table to look me in the eye, or to find the missing mark perhaps. His censure shrivelled even the leaves and branches that bound me. He took my hand and we walked through the fields of wirra, leaving everyone behind as if they had never been there. The fields expanded with each of our steps. I fed as we walked and he watched.

  ‘Have you fed on anything else?’

  It was hard to answer between mouthfuls. ‘Uhm … sand … locusts.’

  ‘Tell me about the locusts.’

  I felt the whirring inside my skull. ‘Small and snug and hidden — but we still found them.’

  ‘You remember that feeding?’

  I nodded, not wanting to tell him that once I had forgotten everything.

  Soon the fields of wirra became fields of trees heavy with fruit and pools of water reflecting all colours, and shy animals that hid behind the grasses. It suddenly hit me. So much abundance but hardly anyone to feast on it.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  The Honourable Head smiled to himself. ‘They’re keeping the peace, they’re preserving themselves at home. Thus preserving the earth.’

  ‘But I don’t see any homes.’

  ‘They’re hidden, they don’t want to be disturbed after the festival. Yearly we pay homage to the trees then we rest. We let even the trees rest. We can’t worry nature with all our to-ing and fro-ing. This is how to preserve it. We can’t soil it every day with our want. We must return it to its purity, so we too are returned to ourselves.’

  His purple clothes seemed to hang onto nothing. His body was barely there, except for his head. He was too shrunken, as if his flesh had crumpled into a slip of bones. But his words filled the fields, even the smallest leaf.

  ‘There is a season for feasting.’

  I knew it by his look. He was censuring me for feasting on the grains.

  ‘But no season for wasting. Let me tell you about your ancestors long ago. They lived on season after season of feasting and fighting. They wasted the earth, each other and themselves, they were breeding beyond control.’

  Aren’t they your ancestors too? I wanted to ask, but instead found myself saying, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know — ’

  ‘Now you do. Their frenzy was beyond control. I had to think out a way to save this last green haven. I thought out the border between the wasters and the carers.’

  ‘Who were they, may I know, please?’

  ‘Isn’t the answer obvious, girl?’

  ‘But how do you tell between the carers and the wasters — how can you be sure?’

  ‘I am always sure.’ The emphatic way he spoke made the veins on his brow bulge and his cheeks tremble. Fire was in his eyes, then they gre
w dark.

  His certainty filled me with terror.

  ‘I’m always-always sure.’

  I felt my cheeks burn then grow cold.

  His hand swept through the landscape. There was pride in his voice. ‘I re-thought this earth and found that it is good. First I stopped the wasteful fighting, I stopped the wars. I brought justice to all territories for the sake of peace. This quest was a difficult and bloody mission, but I succeeded. Then came purity. That was the best part. I purified the earth and our need for it. I controlled the seasons. Now there is a season for feasting, then for resting, and a season for just looking.’ He ran his fingers through the length of a grass, a trunk, a leaf. He tried to reach out towards something moving behind the grass, an animal, he said, but it was too shy. I only saw a flash of black and brown.

  ‘The gifts of the Kingdoms,’ I murmured, remembering how Beenabe had told tales about them. I wondered if she knew where I was and if she cared.

  ‘Precious gifts, yes. Look at how nature repeats itself in design. We can only repeat nature’s law in the daily life of the Kingdoms. I thought this out, all of it. The buildings and roads of steel, all the unnatural trimmings had to give way to what’s left of the water, the oils and the grains, the trees and the grass, and the very few animals that complete the gifts for everyone’s eyes and stomachs. For symmetry. For equality. For justice. So the Kingdoms are more equal now. But equality is deserved only by those who are willing to care for these gifts. Gift giving is reciprocal.’

  I was sure I had heard all those thoughts before, but I refused to hear the other memories that came with them. I desperately wanted to believe him, even if in my skull the whirring admonished my betrayal and forced me to ask, ‘Tell me, please, why can’t us strays be equal too — with you?’ I choked on my last words, afraid he’d strike me for saying them.

  The Head turned to me slowly, as if it bore the weight of all that anyone could possibly know. ‘You are equal. Among yourselves on your side of the border — don’t we give you rations equally? You are all equal only to what you have done to and for the natural world. Each is rewarded with what each one deserves. That’s justice.’

  ‘What do we deserve?’

  The thin lips grew thinner as he smiled. ‘Ah, you don’t know the full story then.’

  ‘What if we’re hungry?’

  He censured me again with those eyes. ‘This is a season for only looking.’

  ‘Why are the animals shy?’

  His thin lips had almost disappeared, but he was not smiling. ‘Shy? The animals are not shy but mortally afraid of our want — but what would you know?’

  I know want, the desert knows.

  ‘No animal is safe with the strays.’ His lips curled in contempt.

  I thought of the mothers feeding on the guris, I thought of hunger and I had so much to say but did not know where to begin and end.

  ‘Let me show you something.’ The Head tapped a tree trunk with his brow and suddenly it opened into a room of boxes of all shapes and sizes, walls of them. I stopped in my tracks. Not quite like the boxes from before. These were bigger, thicker. I waited for them to sing the Kingdoms’ songs. I was sure these would have many voices with many highs and lows, what with their immense number.

  The Head was studying me. ‘Come in and tell me — what do you see?’

  Closest to me were the thicker boxes with dark scratchings on the side. These were unlike the boxes that I knew. These smelled ancient and they were all colours. I wished Beenabe were around to tell me if the orange box that she’d lost looked like any of these. Maybe she could tell me what orange is.

  ‘These tell all the stories about the wasters that made the animals shy, as you say.’ He picked up one of the boxes, he waved it before me. It looked heavy with scratches even on its face. ‘This is a book, these are walls of books, of stories and our commitment to them — ’ and he echoed the Missions, while picking up one book after another. ‘We will protect you — the Book of Borders. We will care for you — the Book of Rations. We will act for you — the Book of Fires. We will think for you — the Book of Songs. They’re all here, lest we forget them, especially the fires.’

  Book? Box? Are the fires allowed to be told or sung? I stood there in awe, waiting to hear the stories. Now I’ll know if I remembered right. Was it five hundred tents? Were they really blue? Did they burn for a long time, like the stars? But the boxes remained silent and he led me away from them towards even bigger boxes that I could see through. I stared at their insides. These I knew so well. Once I thought they were sticks and balls gaping silently at the desert sun. Now — they sing? Were they inside those other boxes all along? In the desert, in the ruins? I turned to him, overwhelmed by the shock of the possibility. ‘Is it them that sing?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, running his hand over a box that housed a skull and bones. ‘In their silence, they sing. They remind us of history, they keep us vigilant.’

  I faced a skull. I waited for it to sing, as I had I waited on the day I woke from my longest sleep. But from its gaping mouth, nothing. I turned to the Head, but he would have none of my confusion. He walked me through the long row of boxes and their silent skulls and bones. I waited and waited for the songs.

  We stopped walking after the last box. He turned me around to face where we had started. I heard more sadness than anger in his voice.

  ‘All good Kingdom builders,’ he said. ‘All victims of the stray fires that had crossed our border — but never again, never again.’

  ‘Do you know our stories? Do you wish to know them?’

  The Honourable Zacarem did not give me a chance to answer. He was not even looking at me. He was pushing a wall of books, then he was pushing me down to my knees. I panicked. It had grown dark in the room, no, everything had turned black.

  ‘You will not close your eyes, you will bear witness,’ I heard him say.

  How could I see? Around me, the walls had grown black. The black began to move. I thought I saw something emerge from the blackness. The black was breaking? Then the movement became an arm, a head, a torso. Then it hit me! A burnt body was rising from black fog and debris, then another, and another. Silently they began milling about, walking towards me. I opened my arms. ‘Are you number 425? Or 500?’ But they were just walking and never getting out of the blackness, never reaching me. How was I to know that they were the moving pictures of history?

  I turned to Zacarem. ‘Oh most Honourable Head, we were five hundred families, with blue numbers on us — to monitor our to-ing and fro-ing to the border— oh, yes, 1 to 500, sir — are they them, sir — please, was anyone saved like me?’

  ‘Watch that blackness, girl. Your ancestors did that to one of our biggest homes. The old and the infirm consumed in a second. Like kindling.’

  I had never felt such dryness in my throat. When I found my voice again, the words were as dry. ‘I didn’t know, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes … sorry … ’ he whispered back.

  Briefly we were bound in regret then his voice was restored to anger. ‘We are the ones you love to hate, because we made it. We made good.’

  ‘Blessed are they whose bones don’t sleep

  They are guarding the living’

  Up and down the rows of boxes, my voice suddenly rose and fell like someone else’s footsteps. I could not help singing. The urge came from my own skull: You bless all the dead, any dead, even if they’re not your own.

  The Honourable Zacarem seemed moved by my song. He kept muttering to himself, ‘I thought so hard to fix the world … but maybe — ’ he looked away. ‘Maybe I got it wrong.’ Then he grew silent, his body easing, soaking up the song.

  Did I hear him right?

  The Honourable Head’s eyes closed, lulled by my song. I sang to bless the dead, and the living breathed with the notes. This man of hundreds of years looked almost like a child now, in peaceful slumber. After a while, the corners of his lids grew moist. I reached out to wipe them, but t
hen my song became a whirring and he quickly woke up from the lull. He looked around, uncertain, muttering to himself. ‘But that sound — that’s something else. It is something else.’

  The whirring was unmistakable. He clapped his hands, the place lit up. He grabbed me, examined my brow. ‘What is singing?’ The veins on his head bulged into a purplish map. ‘Who is singing?’

  The song rose with more vigour, but not from my mouth now. It repeated itself in between the whirring, then echoed further away in many voices. The Honourable Head dragged me around the room, he was shouting now. ‘I should have believed the rumour — now girl, where is it, where are they?’ His hands crushed my arms. ‘It’s out, they’re out? Escaped to plague our Kingdoms — you’re done with the fires, and now, locusts? My ministers will hang for this — they should have never let you in!’

  ‘It’s not me, it’s not me,’ I kept saying.

  He clapped his hands again and the walls came alive, with moving pictures of the tired rooms, the terror room, the angry room, then the Kingdoms, as he chanted, ‘Where are they?’ He kept clapping and the pictures kept changing. He checked the sprawling fields of grain and trees, the flowers, the waters, the sky, then the border, which seemed curiously uninhabited. Where are its caretakers? I stared at this new picture. Outside the wall of trees, the fathers were drinking a woman’s offered water. The mothers were laying pouches of grains and oil before another woman shimmering with lights, and a skull singing on her breast. It was that skull that we heard? The shimmering woman raised it. It kept singing in many voices, it finished the song:

  ‘Blessed are they whose homes don’t sleep

  They are guarding the dead’

  My friends had reached the border! I freed myself from my captor and leapt into their arms.

  Where are Shining Lumi and Karitase, and the caretakers of the border? Where am I? I scurried around, searching for my friends. My head reeled with confusion. I was back in the rooms. I recognised the dripping tree and the tired men and women in their long blue smocks. Beside each of them was a pile of dry seeds like those from the rations. Many were eating, the others were rubbing their chests with oil. Their hands were gloved in amber fur. Those with eyes closed had lost the furrows on their brows. They looked rested and oblivious to my walking around. A few were still crouched in fear or raising their fists in anger but most had calmed down to the hand on heart gesture. Without the frenzy of bodies piling up from before, I noticed that they were huddled together according to the colour of their skin. No mixing.