Uncontacted 2.0

Chapter 1

Katavia

The cassava drink tasted bitter as it washed over my tongue. The visitors would be coming today. Mama eyed me as I drank from the gourd.

"Katavia," she said, her voice barbed. "Where is your annatto paint?"

I touched my face, fingers searching for my marks, my identity. "I will fix it," I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Today was not the day to have a plain face, though I wasn't sure if I could hold my hands still enough to paint myself.

"Your hair is a mess. Have you combed it since the last moon ceremony?" She stared at me, her eyes hard.

I tugged at the blunt ends of my dark hair where it fell down my back. I had brushed it before the morning meal and it did not need it again. I did not think so anyway. "I will do that too."

Mama continued to stare at me, searching for something else.

The dirt floor of our hut was cluttered with animal bones, the remains of the Shaman and History Keeper's visit last night. None of my other kin had been invited. Though they had been discussing me and divining my future, I had been told to stay outside and had not been allowed to listen.

That isn't to say that I didn't listen, just that I wasn't supposed to. Once the caisuma drink had pushed them into grandiose gestures and unlocked their tongues, they did not notice me crouched near the hut's opening. I had heard enough of their doubts before the History Keeper chanted my story. The Shaman hummed along, tossed the bones into the dirt, studied them, gathered them in, and tossed them again. Mama had been silent, watching. The way she licked her lips or watched the bones, she was as hungry to know my fate as I was. It would have lulled me to sleep had I not heard the pronouncement: This full moon would decide my future.

What my future held, the Shaman had never said, but the pronouncement hung thick and heavy over my chest, pressing away sleep.

"I will go do those things." I got up and backed away, keeping my face toward Mama as I pushed through the opening of our hut, palm leaves tickling the bare skin on my back. The words I wanted to say were limp on my tongue and I swallowed them instead of pushing them out for Mama to scrutinize.

"Until I see you again," I muttered, touching my fingers to my forehead.

"And don't wander today!" she shouted after me, as though the force of her words could bind me to the maloca.

The sun blazed down on the small clearing of red earth, thick green trees, and my brown skin. I turned my face up toward her. No matter where she was in the sky, the sun did not seek out flaws. She showed the beautiful and the frightening, the rough with the patient. She lent me her fire. As long as I could feel her touch, I knew that there was strength in me too. Somewhere.

A group of children called out to each other as they dodged between huts. I waved at the shortest, skinniest girl. She waved back, just missing being captured by one of the others. Her arm was bandaged with banana leaves and an herb poultice. "I can't talk to you," she shouted.

"You are playing. I understand," I called.

She ducked around the side of a hut and came toward me, stopping just out of reach, but close enough that she didn't have to shout. "No, I can't talk to you at all. The Shaman said your bad luck is why I fell. My mama said that you should be chased out of the village."

I could only stare at her.

"I'm sorry," she said and ran back to her game.

Her mama was not the only mama who had said that. The memories scratched at my rib cage from the inside like a trapped bird. The number of people in the village that would associate with me had dwindled to almost nothing.