[https://i.imgur.com/aQwtEXl.jpg]

We traveled south and then southwest to get around the rocks and to avoid meeting the Ha-Mewhatchi clan again. As always, I walked ahead, and Pamala-Rashe followed behind me. He moved slowly, constantly making stops and sitting on the ground. His posture became extra-stooped, almost hunched, his head always down.

The Sun passed its highest point. Pamala-Rashe made another stop, and this time I lingered near him.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. He did not answer and it looked like he genuinely couldn’t. He sat on the ground with hands around his shins, his head buried between his knees, breathing frequently. Suddenly, his breath got even more intensive. He turned his head and vomited into the nearest shrubs. I wanted to go closer, but he signed to me with his hand to stay away. After several ugly spasms, he caught his breath and slowly got up, holding onto his spear.

“ ‘Ets go,” he muttered.

I cursed the Strange Man for not giving me an orb for treating diseases. How helpful it would’ve been! I did not know how to help Pamala-Rashe; I did not have any medicine on me; I did not know of any ways of easing his suffering. We could only hope to meet some peace-minded people who could help. Oh, Strange Man, how could you miss such a simple thing?

The sun was already nearing the horizon. Pamala-Rashe vomited again and sat bent in the shelter of several boulders. I walked in circles around the boulders, listening to grasshoppers and cicadas ring with their songs in the tall withered grass. To fight off the bad thoughts that swarmed over my mind, I reran in my head the story of Gehilia* who went to the north and didn’t return, and then the story of Hata-Gode-ok who returned. There was a certain common idea that went through these stories. It was new to me, as someone from the valleys of the River Ma where the dead just went underground and that was it. Sometimes in our stories, they came back but only temporarily. They were mutilated, but they always remained who they used to be.

Here, it was different: nobody really returned from there. Hata-Gode-ok returned but lost his humanity along the way. There was something in the desert that changed things for good.

I wanted to drink; my flask was left with Pamala-Rashe, so I threw down the blue orb. A thin but strong stream broke out from the ground. I drank a little and picked up the orb; the stream ceased immediately, leaving a small, quickly drying puddle. I made several more circles around the boulders, immersed in my thinking.

No one ever returns from the desert in their proper form. Whoever does return is transformed. Should I really be seeking to talk to that man, then? Will he answer my questions? Will he give me the true answers? Maybe I’m better off not losing time on this.

All my thinking ended abruptly when from the shadow of a rock that lay in my way—that I was about to step on—a yellow-gray, unusually big, and righteously angry viper rose with a threatening hiss and an open mouth. I jumped up; I felt something fly past me and was sure that my shin was bitten. I winced away from the rock and stopped, staring at my shin—it was unscathed. A spear lay between the rocks, the slithering creature twining around its end.

Pamala-Rashe stood on the slope in front of the closest boulder, breathing deeply. I stood below, gawking at him, at the spear, and at my legs.

“Watch where you step,” he pushed out in one gasp. He looked at me the way a strict father would look at his clumsy child after another screw-up. “We say it for a reason,” he added and picked up the spear, throwing the bleeding viper away. I stood still, trying to gather all the words that swirled around in my mind: What? Thank you! How? Are you well now? I couldn’t say anything. He walked past me, ignoring my shock. I fetched our bundle from between the boulders and followed him, throwing the last glance at the slain snake. The snake that I managed to dodge...

At night, I boiled some water with the mandrake root that my green orb provided. This was one of the remedies I remembered from childhood—parents would give it to kids whenever they had a fever.

Pamala-Rashe lay on his right side, his head resting on the antelope hide taken from our bundle. He did not respond when I called out to him; I touched his shoulder and almost cried out, pulling my hand away—he was hot as fire. I carefully held his head, helping him drink the beverage, and sat on the opposite side of the fire. Later at night, he began shaking, and he shook so strongly that I became fearful.

“Put out the fire,” he suddenly whispered

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed. “We’re in the middle of the savanna. Not to mention, you’re all shivering.”

Pamala-Rashe began slowly turning to the left side, sniffing and making strange sounds. He stopped halfway, with the back of his head pushing into the hide, his chest arched and knees bent. I tried to help him, but he began moaning. With a cry, he collapsed onto his left side and curled up like an infant. I covered him with his cloak and tried to sleep, but couldn’t.

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In the morning, he did not get up. He lay with his head pulled all the way back, his hands covering his face, knees resting against his stomach. He did not move, did not reply, only breathed like there was no air around.

There was a stick with a weather-stained rug on its end some three hundred steps to the northwest of our night camp. It was a sign of someone’s territory, and not having any other option, I ventured past that stick. Soon enough, I met up with a party of local hunters on a hillside. Luckily, they were grown-up, reasonable men and did not attack me at once, but agreed to come with me.

When we got to our night camp, Pamala-Rashe was still in his weird curved position, trembling, and one of the hunters, the tallest one, immediately said,

“Eh, boyo, that’s black fever.”

“Can we help him?” I asked hopefully, but the tall hunter looked at me with an expression which I could only understand as ‘Who knows?’ He turned to the youngest of the hunters and said,

“Go tell Ala-Tla**. Go quick!”

With the help of his and my cloaks, we carried Pamala-Rashe over to the hunters’ camp. Ala-Tla, a small, youngish-looking woman with gray hair, stopped us on the approach and ordered some boys to bring up her stuff.

“When is he going to get better?” I asked her naively. She answered with a short glance and led me aside.

“Stay here, don’t interrupt,” she said.

In a flash, we were surrounded by people. Men and women stood staring at the newcomers, kids in kids’ manner boorishly pushed closer to see the lying outsider. Somebody brought bags and bundles; a boy of pre-initiation age lit up several green sticks and began spreading the crowd with them. The sticks stank atrociously—people spread away in a wide circle, leaving Pamala-Rashe and Ala-Tla in the center. The boy then planted a dozen of the smoldering twigs in a circle. I was told to stay outside of the circle, and so I diligently did.

For four days, I remained at the site, outside the camp, near the circle inside which Pamala-Rashe lay. I watched every day as Ala-Tla, who I learned was the clan’s shaman, smeared his face with brown ointments and smoked him with something that, from a distance, looked like birds’ legs. Pamala-Rashe lay with his back curved, his eyes half-closed, rolled into his head.

I spent these four days almost without food, barely with any sleep. The people didn’t come to us anymore, save for several boys who brought food for us. Ala-Tla remained in the circle, performing her rites non-stop, constantly mumbling some chants. There was one line that stuck in my mind because she said it at the end of every verse:

right away, go astray, dirty laps get dirt in grabs

In the early morning of the fifth day, I woke up with a strange feeling of something missing. Ala-Tla did not chant her usual rites. She sat near Pamala-Rashe motionless, and Pamala-Rashe himself lay still. Hearing my hesitant movements, she turned her hand and signed to come closer.

“See him,” she said as I sat down near Pamala-Rashe. I called his name but he did not react whatsoever. He lay supine, his neck all stiff and bent over. He was weak, emaciated, his ribs rose in unequal bursts with a sizzling sound. I took his hand and felt that he wasn’t hot anymore.

“Is he getting better?” I asked the shaman excitedly, but she only moved her eyes up once. She was gathering powders into jars and tying up all the weird remedies in bunches. She then put it all in a sack, and the meaning of these actions suddenly struck me.

“You didn’t help him!” I exclaimed in a rush of anger.

“I did what I could,” Ala-Tla said crossly. “The spirit who brought this illness is beyond our reach.”

I called to Pamala-Rashe again to no avail. He lay still, breathing heavily, not moving. The blue morning dusk changed to crisp predawn light, and he still lay like that, and I still sat beside him, holding his hand. At some point, his eyelids moved, showing the whites of his eyes. I thought he was about to say something, but that was a false expectation. His breathing became slower and heavier. Every gasp was like a drag, and every exhale was like a cough. Then his gasps became long and creaky and his exhales were short, almost insensible. He suddenly opened his eyes and he opened them wide. I thought that he looked at me; I felt that he tried to say something. Instead, he made another gasp which was followed by a long, lasting, hoarse exhale.

“Wind, feather, fluff, through the sky fly high,” I heard somebody say behind me.

After that, he did not move anymore.

***

“Where’s he from?” they asked me, but I didn’t know.

“Who are his relatives? Where’s his clan?” and that I didn’t know either.

“Why does he carry three lion fangs? Is he from a warrior phratry?” I couldn’t answer.

“Look at those two scars on his shoulder. He must be from the eastern clans,” they said, pointing at two lines on Pamala-Rashe’s skin which I’d never even noticed.

“But they left the plains long ago. How come he stayed behind?” They inferred, and I had nothing to add.

“Does he not have anybody who knows him?” they questioned me.

“He has a wife. She lives at the River,” was all I could report.

The clan that I stumbled upon was Tlara-Tapaa. Shikloe-Hadzhi somehow already knew about us and our life at the River. I was accepted as a relative. Pamala-Rashe’s funeral was held as that of a relative—in the River’s custom. The burning reed boat with his body floated down the River Iz, leaving a low dark smoke that soared over the opposite shore. I spent eight days there, on the shore, sitting on a cliff, waiting for the boat to return, for a stooping figure of a man to appear in it, for that man to jump from it and say with a foolish face: “Well, let’s go!”

But nobody returned this time.

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* - /gɛˈhiliə/ - a character from Chapter 14.

** - /ˌala-ˈtla/