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During our stay in raawu, I got acquainted with a River man named Hilla-Tupa*. He came to the raawu with his cousin and wife, Yeni-Paani**, to share some of their linens. Yeni-Paani gave me one such linen. I was struck by the elaborate patterns painted on it and asked her about their meanings. Hilla-Tupa soon joined us, and we spent a good half of the day talking about the patterns, to the point that people around us started grumbling as not all linens had yet been shared.
They finished giving away the goods and for the evening, the four of us including Pamala-Rashe made a separate fire on the side of the raawu. By the next day, we became companions.
Hilla-Tupa and Yeni-Paani invited us to the settlement they were staying at. It was upstream, on an island between the channels of the River. We hiked there by the shore and reached the island in two days. There, we embarked on a reed boat and crossed the water, and as we did, I was once again attacked by enormous swarms of gnats and mosquitos, and once again I seemed to be the only target, hiding beneath my cloak, while others remind mostly spared. Only when we reached the settlement and Hilla-Tupa applied a certain ointment on my skin was I finally relieved. The ointment had a pungent odor, but the prospect of being eaten alive was worse, so I put up with it and kept applying it during my entire stay.
Our stay, meanwhile, turned out to be long. The southern shore soon got covered by thick greyish smoke. Scouts reported that the savanna was on fire and so treading through it was out of question. The calamity lasted for almost a whole moon, after which the last summer rains swept across the plains, and the dry winter settled in immediately after. We spent that whole winter in the settlement on the island in the middle of the River.
During that time, we developed a great rapport with Hilla-Tupa. His name meant Strong-Hand which was ironic since his body was spare and his hands were so thin I could enfold them with my hand. His grip, however, was indeed strong and he could easily pull a whole raft to the shore on his own. His wife’s name, Yeni-Paani, meant ‘Small-Swallow’. The interesting thing was that hilla in Hu meant ‘strong’, whereas, in Hilla-Tupa’s native tongue, it meant ‘big’. Thus, two names placed together played an intricate duet of meanings, all the more amusing considering that Yeni-Paani was actually taller and broader than her husband.
Hilla-Tupa was from Clan Koo***, and his wife was from Clan Wawava****. Along with his name, he called himself Standing on the Green Hill, and talking about his wife, he said that they were Brought Together by the Wind. Hilla-Tupa was a ‘devoted one’, which meant that he was not initiated as a shaman, but he had the sacred knowledge and skills and so could perform the rituals even when the shaman himself wasn't around.
Pamala-Rashe stayed with us in the settlement. The locals grew fond of him, though several younger men took a habit of teasing him for his look. Aside from the twisted nose, small eyes, short height, slight hunch, and funny gait, he apparently also had a very short temper which did not help and only provoked his bullies.
Once I gathered the young men who engaged in those plays and told them a story about a hunter who was teased by a pheasant. The pheasant pecked the hunter on his back. The hunter was small, hunched, had the clumsy step of a gazelle walking on two, so the ignorant pheasant figured this man was incapable of hurting it. It pecked, pecked, and pecked him on the back, cracking jokes and insulting him all the while. The hunter tolerated the pecking for a long, long time, but eventually lost patience. He grabbed his spear and rose. The pheasant flapped its wings, laughing at the lousy hunter: “A-kok-kok-kok, catch me if you can!” The fowl flew away and was a hundred steps away when the hunter raised his spear, took a very good aim, and HOP! Hit the stupid fowl right into its butt. The hunter took the pheasant, cut it up, cooked it, and ate it.
“That hunter is right there,” I pointed at Pamala-Rashe who was squatting at the fire further down. The young men gawked at him, amazed.
“Are you serious?” one of them asked me. “From a hundred steps?”
“Even Tuna-Shidda couldn’t have pulled it off!” said another one.
“These eyes bore witness,” I said. “Mark my words, fellas. This man knows how to strike his targets.”
Following my recount, the young men made a small contest. They weaved a reed ring and put it between the branches of a tree. They counted a hundred steps and established that he who put his spear in the middle of the ring will be considered a true hunter. Pamala-Rashe was obviously invited, and I watched the contest too from a distance.
The young men made their attempts, but none of them could even reach the tree–the spears pathetically landed in the wet mud in front of it. Then, Pamala-Rashe took the turn. He trod back quite a long way, bent his knees, jumped one–two–three times forward, and heaved the projectile with all his power. The spear flew in an arc; it didn’t get through the ring, but it knocked it off the tree.
For the young men, it was enough. The teasing stopped, and ever since they greeted Pamala-Rashe the ‘Good River’s Way’–by putting their weapons up and then pressing them to the chests. Pamala-Rashe was bewildered by the sudden change.
“I wonder if ’t’s some new way of theirs to mock me,” he told me one evening.
“I think they just didn’t know how to properly respect people,” I said. “They know now, and so they do.”
Our relationship, in general, was a strange matter. I had stayed alongside him for long enough that my distrust started to disperse, but I still wasn’t sure what to call him. Everybody kept calling us friends, which I certainly could not accept. On several occasions, we were even called father and son, which was hilarious considering that we did not look like each other whatsoever. At best, I could settle on allies, though even that was dubious since I had no idea why he kept sticking to me. He remained reserved, did not elaborate on any of my questions.
Strangely, the locals did not even try asking him about anything.
“Why bother a man with needless questions?” Hilla-Tupa told me when I remarked on that fact.
“But wouldn’t you want to know who is beside you?” I asked him, astonished. “I mean, back in our valleys, it’s a matter of proper behavior. If you want to converse with somebody you’re not related to, you say your name, who you are, where you are from, and what you need.”
“But what if one doesn’t have answers to those questions yet needs to converse with you?”
“But how do you build up trust then? You folks put a lot of value in trust, don’t you?”
Hilla-Tupa put a cutter between his lips to tie up the branching twigs on the basket.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Well, here on the River, we have different approaches for that. My father taught me that we should judge by deeds. If the deeds of a man tell good intentions, then it is better to trust the man without further conditions.”
Hilla-Tupa put away the basket he was weaving and reached out for a cutter.
“Pamala-Rashe has been good to you, hasn’t he?”
Thinking back to our days with him, I agreed.
“Then I think he deserves your trust, doesn’t he?” Hilla-Tupa said and started cutting off the loose wales.
Once again, I had to agree.
***
One windy winter night, Hilla-Tupa and I were spending time together in his reed house, drinking hot tartish rozhopataki that his wife made for us. By that time, we had become close friends and developed a deep trust in each other. I opened up about the purpose of my journey, told him of the strange man, told him the stories I had heard, and even broke my earlier vow and showed him the four helpful orbs.
“You know,” I said to him that night, “sometimes, I get this nasty feeling of…”
I stopped to find a proper word for what I wanted to express, but Hilla-Tupa cut in,
“Regret?”
“Well, saying it like that would be insulting to all the spirits that have carried me through my journey so far.”
“But putting it any other way would be dishonest too, wouldn’t it?”
The keenness of his mind was one of the many traits that I admired in him.
“You know… Back in our valleys, we have a certain way of looking at the world. It’s simple, and I quite like it. When I think of Origins, or Raven Dash and three elements, or the story about Hataid and Edi, I in a way think of myself. This is me. These stories are me.
“I used to listen to my mother tell these stories, and they helped me fight my fears. Thunder didn’t scare me anymore. I knew that Ulnad was simply playing and he soon would stop. I wasn’t worried about death that much. I knew that my body would be put into the earth and fids* would gnaw it clean, but my spirit would remain here. I would still be around, and my mates would treat me to their meals, and one day I would even become a guardian spirit for somebody in my family.
“Now I’m here, out of my valley, having gone all that way. I’ve heard all these things that others tell and I cannot understand what is true and what is not anymore. I cannot understand what should I believe. What will happen to me after I die–truly happen–and what should I actually do to prepare for that?
“And then, there is something even worse than that. When I spoke to the Surians–they have this trait to them: they need you to believe in what they say. So when they say that Raven is a treacherous scavenger, they need you to agree. You must join along in their hate toward this fella. We do not see Raven like that, but that’s not interesting to them.
“I am confused, my friend,” I finished. “Yes, that’s the word. I am confused.”
Hilla-Tupa listened to me carefully and after a lengthy pause and a deep sigh, said,
“There is this weird anecdote that our youth sometimes tells. You might have heard it – about a hunter who ran after an antelope.ˮ
“No, I haven't heard it.ˮ
“One hunter was known for being exceptionally fast. He was so fast, in fact, that he could outrun many animals–even leopards and cheetahs. One day he heard from a trickster spirit that an antelope knowing the essence of life descended from the sky and was roaming the plains. Young and foolish that he was, he didn't give it a second thought. He grabbed his spear and his javelins and ran out into the savanna to hunt the animal.
“Soon, he stumbled upon an antelope that looked like the one the spirit described him. He crawled up to it and launched a javelin, but the Antelope dashed away. He chased after the animal, but it ran so fast he couldn't even get close to it.
“He ran for a long time, following the animal, until he noticed that he had been followed himself – a pack of wild dogs was running behind him, with their fangs out, with their eyes on him. A great dishonor for a hunter to become the hunted. He didn't know what to do, though, and just kept running, and soon he noticed a lion run after the dogs who ran after him while he was running after the antelope. A great dishonor twice, and he didn't know what to do with still. He kept on running and soon noticed that his enemies from the neighboring tribe were following them right behind the lion who ran after the dogs who ran after the hunter while he was running after the Antelope. He cursed the day when he chose to listen to the trickster spirit and went out on the hunt. He couldn’t stop and kept on running. He ran and ran, ran and ran, all the way across the savanna, over the edge to the other side and back.
“They say he runs all over the plains to this day. If you stand up on the Round Hill–it's a hill nearby, south-west of here–and stay there long enough looking south, you may in time see this chase: an antelope, a hunter behind it, the wild dogs after them, the lion following and a group of hunters treading in their trail. ˮ
I chuckled lightly when Hilla-Tupa finished.
“That’s kind of amusing, but it’s also rather cruel.”
“Cruel it is,ˮ Hilla-Tupa said. “Imagine, the young man lived his life, knew his stuff, had his prospects; had he stayed where he was, he would have been fine. But he chose to trust the trickster spirit, and now he's hunted by foes. He has to run for his life forever, for if he stops, his foes will get him. He can still get the Antelope, but that doesn't matter because then his foes will get him too. And even if he somehow outwits the foes and gets the Antelope – what are the chances that it'll be the one Antelope that knows the essence of life? Remember, it was the trickster spirit who told him this from the beginning. Who's to say that it did not lie to the hunter?ˮ
He sipped the drink. I frowned.
“Do you mean to tell me,ˮ I said, “that the man who gave me this task might be a trickster spirit? That I am hunting an animal of unknown nature?ˮ
“I can’t say without knowing. But here you are hunted by your doubts, and the antelopes you catch seem to rather hurt you than feed you, don’t they?”
Somehow, I felt that this was going in the wrong direction.
“But even if that is so–what am I to do? I can’t return, less I get another pack of ‘predators’ on my tail–this time the doubts about whether it was right for me to return.”
“That is true in a way,” Hilla-Tupa said, thinking it over. “Well, the easiest way to avoid all those troubles altogether is to not go out into the plains, at least not alone and unprepared. But since you're already roaming out there, you’ll have to keep running, my friend, and you better run fast. Catch all those animals–gather all those stories–for the strange man. Do not succumb to the foes that are your doubts. Focus on the ‘antelopes’ and don’t think about the essence that they carry.”
Hilla-Tupa made another pause and after a time, continued,
“The easiest way to avoid the fate of that hunter,” he repeated, “is to not go out of the camp. So, to preserve yourself from the effect that the stories may have on you, stay in your own camp.” He pointed his finger at my heart. “You have the stories that your fathers and mothers told you–make it your camp while you’re in the plains. Maybe later on, you’ll be able to return to your actual camp and bring in some of those antelopes along–imagine how good of you that would be!”
I hunched over, watching the fire dance in the stone circle, listening to the reed house crunch under the rising northern wind.
“What do you think of your own tales? ˮ I asked him, wondering.
“I think they didn't come from nowhere. Everything comes from something, doesn’t it?ˮ He chuckled. “Who knows, maybe all stories are actually true in their own sense.ˮ
The sound of the storm outside was loud and fierce. These northern winds (which the locals, incidentally, call Dot – just like the sand spirit is called in other places) were ferocious in this part of the world. They brought with them dust powder that cut skin and blinded eyes. They could blow all winter day, but they were especially strong during winter nights.
“Tell me about Tuna-Shidda.ˮ I said.
Hilla-Tup lowered the cup and raised his eyes.
“Tuna-Shidda? Tuna-Eye... Tuna, tuna... oh, Big-Eye. Wait, nobody told you those stories yet? My friend, you’ve missed a big one. Listen!ˮ
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Footnotes:
* - /ˌhila-ˈtupa/
** - /ˌjɛni-ˈpaːni/
*** - /koː/
**** - /waˈwava/