The Gods Among Us

Chapter - 12 - I Looked Around At

I looked around at the clan as the darkness drew over us and continued.

Tall One had been gathering support, I continued, for his challenge with the clans' chief. Rumor had spread, as usual, through the clan. Something was killing off the women and children and it was time to move on, but Old Man didn't want to. The grasslands were shrinking and the game had already begun to disappear. The River that flowed from the Valley of Death shrank into ever smaller pools where herds of animals would gather hoping to find enough water to sustain their numbers. Old Man knew that his time had come. The clan was very unhappy, they were becoming restless, and Tall One had called the challenge.

To prepare himself to fight Tall One, the chief walked to the mud flats where the great oxbow lake had stood and covered himself with the dark red mud. The Acacia trees and Fig trees found ways to survive along the dry ravine and the lack of hungry wildlife provided opportunities for wildflowers, thorny roses, and fruit plants to thrive.

As he applied the mud, he felt each raised scar he had earned over his life. First, he ran his hand over the great spiral scar from when he single-handedly killed those four outsiders. At four rains, he gave himself his own scar for his first kill - a snake nearly as big as himself. He struggled with it in the reeds along the river, careful not to let it bite him. He skinned it and made a belt for his knife. The flesh he shared with his father who was proud of him.

Many kills I have had since that snake, he said aloud looking over the valley that once flowed green with vegetation. Many times in his long life, he had hunted with the elders of his clan, the Mirumbura. Many times, he swam in the cool waters of the Mane River. Many women he'd had. Most of all the women. But since the end, since the Valley of Death awoke, he has moved his clan further north away from their homeland. And still, the blame rests with him, Old Man - the clan leader.

The rainy season came and went having brought little rain. Even the fierce, and undying dragons, could find no refuge from the shrinking river, and those that couldn't find their way downriver died, baking themselves into a muddy grave.

The chief talked recently with the elders, and Tall One was there. They sat without fire in a cold circle. The last storm brought lightning two years ago. Tall One sat quietly admiring his mentor. He spoke to the youngest member of the elders.

You forget, Black Paw, how the valley got its name. The Valley of Death is so called because of the rumblings and fire rocks that fall from the sky. He waived his arm towards the volcano that sat at the far southern point of the river valley that fed the entire countryside they lived in.

It had been named Valley of Death many lives back. We have always lived in such a place.

No, said Black Paw, it was Simbabe who named it Valley of Death, when she first arrived here. So she told me the other night.

She tells you such tales when it pleases her. Perhaps you didn't please her last night Black Paw. They say she has little use for the likes of us but to warm her bed.

Black Paw had nothing to say. He hated the Old Man the most of everyone because he was always the brunt of his sarcasm.

Ask Bamali, said Black Paw, she said the same thing to him last moon when he shared her bed.

Bamali stood up and stared at the sky and said in a low sonorous voice, It was that light in the sky, and he pointed to the North Star, that she spoke with that night. She spoke of our doom saying that an ill wind would blow very soon and so begin the end. I asked her what she meant and she said nothing more but only stared into my eyes.