Locust Girl: A Lovesong Read online

  Very soon everything became one shadow. Night had fallen and I was still running. I only slowed down when I heard a familiar sound. The tapping of spoons? Then I saw the first lights from a distance, moving forward and back, as if they were making up their minds then changing them with the constancy of the restless wind. They seemed to be leaving and returning to shadows darker than the night. I edged closer, but was stopped by a long, long line of twisted metal. I reached out, and cut myself. Barbed wire. It was a strangely wondrous hurt, a cut into memory, as I clambered up the sharp border towards a welcomed sight. Still shadows, like dunes of equal shapes and sizes, were tied to each other. No, they’re tents, my brow urged me to remember. My breast leapt, grew warm. An old word was waking up there. Home, home. Then it went to sleep again as I heard only alien tongue from the tents and the men walking away from them and back, light cupped in their hands. But the way they looked up assured me they were my kin. Did they not trust the stars to help them digest their dinner? Someone told me that. Who? When?

  I crept towards a tent and peeked inside. An old woman was beating a bowl with a spoon while a younger one, perhaps her daughter, licked it clean. Eyes closed, bodies rocking to the rhythm. Suddenly I was afraid for them and the walking men. I was desperate to warn them, but how and of what?

  Then I sensed a shadow again, sneaking behind me. It grabbed my arm and pulled me down, muffling my scream with a hand on my mouth. ‘Shhh … shhh … ’ it hushed me, loosening its grip when I was finally calm.

  This creature, whose speech I could not understand, felt damp and rough against me. When the light came on around its neck, I saw that it was afflicted with sores. It looked surprised when I did not recoil from its embrace. A jug soon appeared from under its blanket. It was offered to me and gratefully I drank. The creature almost wept in greater surprise, even joy. I said my thanks. It pounded its chest, whispering, ‘Karitase, Karitase,’ Then it washed my hands and feet, and only then did I realise I was bleeding from cuts, from my crossing over.

  In the morning, I understood more. I found myself huddled with the afflicted woman on the road that led to the tents. She sat there offering her jug of water to everyone who passed, but no one drank. No one dared look at Karitase with her sores. All shrank away, hugging their blankets tightly around themselves, but the afflicted woman did not mind. She was listening to the song in my brow, even if she could not understand it.

  ‘Please have no fear and

  Take this offered hand

  Your thirst, your thirst

  Is my only affliction’

  Louder than our alien tongues, our hands flailed to be understood, to make friends: I will not harm you, I am with you in this.

  This was our wish for conversation. When faced with a stranger, we scare fear away with talk. When we find words to exchange, our hearts will not pound too much. When the shadows grew longer again, Karitase led me to the tent that perhaps she hoped could ease our hearts. We hid some paces outside, waiting for everything to become one shadow. Like me, she found the dark more friendly. No one stared in revulsion or looked away. Here she could pretend that I did not wear a singing locust on my brow, for she was still wary of it. Earlier she had looked at it in awe, then had drawn back but only for a moment. Then she let its wings graze her fingers, but also briefly. We were just getting to know each other.

  Closer to the tent now, we waited until a low light came on inside. It smelled of the oil that now I knew so well. We watched as shadows began creeping in and out of the tent and different tongues were whispered, including my own. When all the shadows had left, Karitase began calling out in a pleading tone. From inside, a woman’s voice answered and Karitase pushed me in.

  I kept my head bowed, I kept myself small. I could not see who or what else were inside, not yet.

  The woman spoke to me, not in my tongue, but I sensed a querying tone.

  I shook my head.

  She asked again, slipping to another strange tongue, then another, until finally she found the right one.

  ‘I said, are you here for a story or a song?’

  ‘Story — song?’ I repeated, perplexed.

  ‘Yes. I do story and song. But first, how much will you pay?’

  Outside the tent Karitase began pleading again, causing the woman to ask me after a hostile pause, ‘So you sing too?’

  I was even more confused, especially with what sounded like protests from Karitase, until another light came on and she was hushed.

  I could see better now. I made out a huge woman reclining among full pouches and jugs. I had never seen a woman with this sprawl of abundance. More lights came on, first on her hair, then around her ankles and wrists, even dangling from the lobes of her ears. She was wearing vials of light. She glowed. She looked me up and down and laughed. ‘So, are you the competition?’

  This was Shining Lumi and her multitude of lights. She never left her tent to queue for rations, but was always well fed. Here women from far and near queued with their share of rations as payment. Shining Lumi owned a skull that must be fed with seeds and oils and water, so it could sing the stories of the loved ones who disappeared in the wars or in their walk to the border, or in the ration line. Those who were maybe dead.

  The skull sat on her breast. I knew its look so well.

  ‘You do know that singing is a crime.’

  The accusation glowed like her, I thought. For the first time I found my voice. ‘No, I do not sing. Not really.’

  ‘She who sings alone

  Does not sing at all

  A song is of someone

  A song is for someone’

  The song brought Shining Lumi quickly to her feet. She panicked and kept hushing me, mumbling about traitor ears and mouths around, and about my stealing the duties of her skull. It had rolled off her breast towards where I was crouching. The skull stared at me, I stared back. I wanted to ask where the rest of its body was. I kept seeing the bones that I could not put back together again.

  By the time Shining Lumi snatched the skull back to her bosom, she had already found out my secret. ‘The plague,’ she whispered. ‘You’re marked with the plague.’

  Outside Karitase burst out in more protests and pleas, but the other woman argued, ‘She means well? But you can’t even understand her. She sounded good? Good songs cannot come from the plague.’

  ‘Not the plague, but food. We ate it long ago.’ My words came with a flood of saliva and the memory of crunching locusts, their sour-sweet taste with a hint of sand. Suddenly I felt the tiny wings beating in my brow, desperate to fly out. But the locust was as trapped as I was, and I could not even remember how or why our irrevocable kinship began.

  ‘Those who feed on the plague are the plague.’ Shining Lumi shuddered at my admission. ‘You are what you eat.’ Her ample flesh rippled with revulsion, then more accusations. ‘So, Locust Girl, are you here to challenge me?’

  When Shining Lumi asked this question, I stopped being Beena. I became the Locust Girl. After this renaming, no one would want to hear my old name again. Especially not my real name when I began remembering the older stories.

  Unable to answer, I had to ask my own question. ‘Why is singing a crime?’

  ‘Why does that sing?’ she countered.

  ‘Why does anyone sing?’ At that time, I believed that all had notes in their lungs and throat, and could naturally expel them like air. It did not occur to me that since I woke up in my hole, I had not heard anyone sing except my brow and those boxes, and the whispering youths in the ruins.

  ‘And what do you sing anyway? I sing the truth, lest we forget it. And who do you sing of? I sing of the lost ones, lest we forget them. And who do you sing for? I sing for those who seek them, lest we forget ourselves. Now can you sing any better?’ Despite her dread, Shining Lumi was out to thrash what she saw as the rival of her precious trade.

  But the truth was no songs were ever sung in this tent, only promises of songs perhaps tomorrow or tomorrow, when
the skull was ready. Promises that were not even sung by Shining Lumi but only whispered in that mouth to ear ritual. ‘Just between you and me, so keep it secret,’ she’d order. Thus each supplicant believed that a special song about the lost beloved had been passed on to the one before her, and her turn would come when the skull was ready, if not today then tomorrow or tomorrow. Hope multiplied with the many tomorrows.

  For Shining Lumi, trade was always good. The hopefuls kept coming. Her jugs were full, her pouches were fat.

  ‘A seed for a song, my dear

  And oil to grease the throat

  Where I will find you safe

  Breathing yet, breathing yet’

  Martireses and Nartireses were the first supplicants who heard my locust’s song. They had been waiting for their turn outside the tent, while Shining Lumi tried to pin down my intentions. They could not believe that both of them had heard a song together, that it was sung aloud. It did not matter that it was sung in a strange tongue. Had the skull lost all caution? What if some traitor ear had heard it too? What if it got caught? What if they all got caught? What if they never found out the truth?

  The twins were the most desperate supplicants of the skull. They came to hear the story about their father who had left for the border and never returned. Maybe this story can stop their ailing grandfather from his nightly to-ing and fro-ing under the stars, planning his own walk to the border to find his son. The twins were afraid he too would never return. They must keep another heartbreak at bay for the sake of their mother. So nightly they sneaked out of their tent to queue in all the ration lines, and to come here. The skull’s waiting mouth was always hungry for seeds, water, and oil. They even traded for oil the only jewellery they’d shared since they left their mother’s womb: the string of red beads that had tied their wrists together to seal their bond. They were special, their grandfather said, they were twins. Those red beads were saved from his mining days. The twins never took them off until one of them lost an arm at the rations. They never married. They barely ate, because the rations were for their elders and for the skull that promised to sing the true story.

  They were not the only ones who walked into the tent that night. There was a girl in search of her mother who had disappeared while looking for a wedding gift for her daughter. There was a woman raving against the crime of rumours. There was a silent girl, a child, hiding under a blanket and the others protested that she was too young to be here until she brandished her fat pouches. There was a shaven youth with bruised arms and face. She had walked in shivering. There was a boy and an old man.

  All of them had heard the song. They wanted to hear it again to make sense of it and to caution the skull against singing aloud.

  At first there were loud protests: ‘No men, no boys!’ But the boy hopped about on one leg, waving his staff to demand his own song, and the old man with cuts on his head kept wringing his handless arms while the twins tried to calm him down.

  Outside there was Karitase who had offered her jug of water to each of the supplicants, but with no success. She brought me here, so Shining Lumi could teach her my tongue and we could have a conversation. So she would know the song that my brow sang after I drank her offering. So she could hear it clearly in her heart.

  Beside ample flesh, all looked like skeletons holding their own lights, demanding to be served. I recognised Gurimar and Hara-haran who refused to look at each other, the old man who had traded his blue stone and the beautiful youth with the bruised cheek, but with more bruises now.

  ‘So the skull’s singing, finally — but why so loud? We’ll get caught.’

  ‘It can keep its promise now.’

  ‘I want my song now.’

  ‘And mine — ’

  ‘You can’t be here, grandfather.’

  I heard anxious hope countered by another woman raving against rumours and the crime of singing. In the furthest corner of the tent, I tried to disappear among the shadows, but Cho-choli was right. It would betray me.

  ‘Daily he walks to the blue skies

  Nightly she dreams of yellow grain

  His feet are nimble, her love is still

  Their wish as constant as their will’

  Everyone turned towards me. I pressed my hands to my brow but it kept singing in a way that I had never heard before. It took on the voice of a child, a woman, a man, an old woman, shifting through various timbres. The supplicants were stunned. They were hearing the voices of their lost ones! All gathered around me, even the children who were not calling me names now, even the woman raving her censure, even Shining Lumi who glowed in her ambivalence. Do I stop her, do I listen?

  ‘Who wishes to dream first?

  Who wishes to walk first?

  Who wishes to drown

  In song and never wake?’

  ‘I want my own song, my own story!’ This was the demand that plagued me, as did the hands that were all over me, except Shining Lumi and the children who knew about the mark of the plague. Even the old man sought me out with his stumps.

  ‘Your own story is yours — tell it

  Your own song is yours — sing it

  Sing how lovely, how deadly

  Is your dream of the border’

  So many hands touching me. So much need, so much affection.

  Gurimar and Hara-haran: 4 pouches of seeds, 3 pouches of oil, no water

  Inige: None (only silence)

  Martireses and Nartireses: 2 pouches of seeds, 2 pouches of oil, 1 jug of water

  Grandfather Opi: None (only despair)

  Padumana: None (only protests)

  Rirean: Half a pouch of oil

  Regrettably, Shining Lumi did the accounting in her head. These payments were no longer hers. They had been laid at my feet, on everyone’s and even my own blanket, now duly returned to me. I imagined Hara-haran had a change of heart and so did her brother, because of their unfinished business with me. Theirs was the loudest demand to hear their mother’s voice again, to know where she is. The twins were not to be outdone, hurling queries at me, while their grandfather wept. Padumana’s protests were as loud, so the soft-spoken Rirean could not be heard at all. Inige, ‘the green tree’, had buried her face in her hands.

  With their blankets off and the gathered lights, I saw how different they were in appearance, in the shade of their skins. They came from different, faraway places. How far did they walk to get here? Hands still hiding my brow, I stared in wonder. So different, but they shared one earnest glow.

  ‘You can all be tried for this. Singing is a crime!’ Padumana’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be tried.’

  ‘It’s not us who are singing, so we’re not breaking the law,’ Rirean whispered. ‘We just need to hear whether they’re still alive and there’s nothing wrong with that. Mother went walking to find a gift for my sister’s wedding … maybe she walked too far.’

  ‘That’s it — we’re walking too far in wanting to know,’ Padumana argued. ‘Trust me, it’s better left alone — ’

  ‘How can we leave it alone — how can you leave it alone, huh? But of course, you don’t have to drag yourself through the desert in search of your mother!’ Hara-haran’s rage was almost choking her.

  ‘Don’t you dare accuse me of leaving it alone!’ Padumana grabbed the girl and began shaking her, but Gurimar’s staff quickly pushed her away. Then he began beating her, egged on by most of the supplicants.

  ‘Yes, beat me as they did,’ and Padumana ripped off her wrap. ‘Go on, exhaust yourself as my village did, as my family did. As if it matters now.’

  Everyone froze. Padumana’s back bore deep scars. She had been flayed to the bone. Her people did not punish by half-measures those who believed in rumours.

  ‘Oh for the rumours of water, seeds, trees, colours, oh for the rumours about the other side, about lovers and kin, oh that they could be sung to ease our hearts,’ Padumana wept.

  ‘It’s the murmur in the heart,’
Inige whispered. ‘The crime of rumour is the crime of hope.’

  We were all hushed. We turned to the whisperer. Her bruises made us wince.

  ‘I have been through the border and back,’ Inige began. ‘I don’t spread rumours, nor do I sing. But I can’t deny the stories, just as I can’t deny these bruises. Once I thought that by walking through the border, I could change it, just as the wind changes the desert.’

  That night we saw the border through Inige’s story. It made us hope, it made us want to weep.

  ‘Its wall stretches forever like the horizon. It’s a natural wall: a row of towering trees shielding the Five Kingdoms that hate real walls. The trees are pruned daily and their leaves polished so they can shine under the blue skies, oh how blue! The fathers are assigned to this task and they are always busy with no time for talk. They forgot about talk after they were arrested at the border. They had walked to the border to look for their children. Or maybe to wish for children in these barren times. But now the fathers have forgotten about children. They have been trained to love trees, oh how green! When the wind blows, the leaves sing and the fathers care for them as they would for children. Now no other story exists beyond this silent task. Sometimes their hearts murmur otherwise, and they find their tongue. They whisper rumours of the old stories, but they’re quickly made to disappear, buried under the roots of the trees. So the trees are kept healthy and they live forever. So the border is evergreen. The border does not change.’

  Shining Lumi spoke in tongues, so everyone could understand Inige’s story. Shining Lumi wanted her share of the payments. She knew how to adjust her trade, but somehow it did not give her the usual pleasure now.

  The twins could not contain their despair after they heard the tale. ‘That’s a rotten rumour! Our father will never forget us.’