TLADI

Chapter 6

Stima and Tladi never spoke of what happened those two nights to anyone. It was to forever remain a secret between the two of them, but it only made things worse. It made Umthunz'omnyama agitated, it made 'The-red-eyed-mob' even more dramatic, it made the village get over it, it made the feeling that had replaced the bristling hostility grow, and it made Sibi, Tladi's pet dog, confused.
You could see this on its face. Sibi, like its owner, Tladi, was very unusual. It appeared normal enough, not a large dog, with a coat of fur in different shades of beautiful browns and fawns and, in some places, darkening to black. It was a beautiful-looking dog and the village was sure that it knew as much. It often used its cute looks to get away with emotional blackmail. It had the deepest liquid-brown eyes, which it would often use to stare up at you wearing the saddest expression known to humankind, never mind dog kind! It also had a personality crisis. It groomed itself meticulously, like a cat and it stretched like one. It insisted on sleeping on a sleeping mat like a human being. It refused to eat raw meat, loved vegetables, cookies and deserts. Moreover, the crowning factors; it had mood swings that ranged from depression to contentedness and had numerous facial expressions, which it would use accurately to express itself. Right now, it was looking at Tladi with an air of 'and what is going on with you?' It seemed to be shaking its cute brown head. It would be very offended if you referred to it as an 'it', so it was always referred to as 'she'. She was sitting in Tladi's new hut where Tladi was trying to weave material the way her mother used to. After she had recently been given her mother's tools she had managed to understand how they worked and was trying to make a replica of the cloak her mother used to wear. Sibi looked at the machine with an air of bewilderment and then looked at Tladi with an air of 'whatever it is, I don't think it works like that!' Tladi was struggling to concentrate and it was beginning to aggravate her. She wisely pushed the aggravation away. She looked at Sibi.
"You know, I'm trying to work here and those thoughts just won't go away. What am I supposed to do?" She said to her only companion and friend apart from her adoptive mother Umthunz'omnyama the Sangoma. Sibi looked at her with a perplexed air of 'how am I supposed to know?'
"And now he's going to come and paint this hut while I am sitting in it!" She said, an expression of irritation wrinkling her pale features. The expression smoothed away into a smile and she chided herself. She should not be smiling; this was a serious matter. She heard footsteps outside and quickly looked to her work with furious concentration. If Sibi could roll her eyes, she would have, but since she was a dog, all she managed was, resignedly, to drop her cute brown head to her paw. Stima entered the hut without much ceremony. He did not seem to expect Tladi to look up from her work, or did he? Tladi could not be sure. I can never know what he is thinking, she thought. Who knows, maybe he is planning to suffocate me with the paint, she thought. Tladi had always been highly paranoid, she insisted that she was just being alert, completely discounting the fact that chemical paint had not yet been invented and that the organic paint used could not suffocate anything. I just cannot penetrate his mind...she thought, not allowing it to show on her face. Stima just kept painting the walls. A friend had started the job earlier, Stima was remarking on how it was an imperfect job.
"So, you're a perfectionist hmm?" Tladi said, raising an eyebrow. Stima non-commitally replied with a:
"Ya, maybe, you could put it that way," placing a bewildering emphasis on the 'that'. Giving Tladi a look and a smile that did not necessarily say all that much yet begged the question; 'why
did you look at me like that?' Tladi decided not to ask, contributing to the sporadic nature of the conversation. She bent her head and focussed on her weaving. Stima got up on a wooden stool to reach the highest regions of the wall. There was a short but seemingly long silence in the small but seemingly vast room. Stima paused on his high perch where he was painting the top of the wall a bright orange-yellow colour. He looked at Tladi, inquiringly. He felt she was about to say something. She looked back, unblinkingly.
"Have you ever been in love?" she asked in her quietly threatening voice. She gave away no clue as to what was the question behind the question or if there even was a question behind the question at all. Stima looked up at the roof almost as though beseeching The Ancestors to send down enlightenment in a lightning bolt of truth to him.
"Yes...I think so... thought so..." he finally answered non-commitally. Before he even asked the next question, she answered it:
"Well, I've experienced no such delusion."
He continued painting while she continued weaving... but even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. She is experiencing that very delusion right now, he thought to himself, as he continued painting. And I know the feeling is mutual, she thought to herself, but I need a sign. I need a sign, he thought. They both simultaneously looked up sharply at each other, as though each was hearing an echo of their own thoughts in a different voice. Sibi missed the moment; she was asleep. Their eyes met, words began to filter into her mind about what she saw there... there is something about that look in his eyes...

That night at The Drummers' Circle, Tladi was moved into expressing it. It was the first time she would give a piece of herself at The Drummers' Circle. She stepped in, eye closed and with her quiet threatening voice she uttered:
"There's something about that look in his eyes
There was something about that look in his eyes...
No, I am wrong; it was not in his eyes... it was in his soul...
There was something about that look in his soul
A look seen through the windows to his soul.
Through which he looked through the windows into my soul, into my soul.
There was something about the way that look felt in my soul.
As if when it stirred and touched me inside, it unleashed something that wanted to burst forth in a flood and cause him to ask...
'Why are you crying?' why am I crying?
Because there's something about that look in your eyes,
No, there is something about that look in your soul.
Somehow in the space between your soul and mine, that look translates into a deep sweet music, the kind of which I have never heard before, but I am listening now... it is not so
unfamiliar...
It must be because I've tasted it before... on hot buds aching to taste something sensual; at that moment your sweetness rested there, tested there; the power of taste that completed my
experience of that look in your soul.
Yet there was still something about that look in your soul,
seen through your soul windows felt all the way through my soul windows, stirred and touched me inside, translating into deep sweet music in the space between our souls, heard by my inner ear, tasted by my soul buds... there was still something about that look in your soul, something
magical, unfathomable and deep, Deep, DEEP...Into and about that look in your soul..."

No one could have ever imagined that Tladi's first piece at The Drummers' Circle would be a love poem. Who knew that she would ever express something at all? Tladi was known to express herself in thunderstorms, not poetry! The people were silent. The silence seemed to stretch like time across all space and distance... Tladi slowly exhaled, this seemed to breathe life into the people. However, he was still the first to beat his drum in applause, his dark eyes glittering at her in the torch lit night. The rest of the drumbeats came in roaring rumbles from all sides. She tore her eye away from his, a real physical pain pulling at her eye socket. She bowed her head and left the circle. The rumbling drums died down and a man with the sweetest voice Tladi had ever heard, began to sing from among the people. The notes soared into the sky and seemed to draw the stars a little closer. There truly was magic in the air...
Who would have known that Stima could sing and that Tladi was poetic? Life at the village had always been suffused with a strange magic. Why? Because the villagers believed in dreams
and there was that beauty of not knowing what may happen next...