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The eight stones of the past were spread across the land. Akere passed through the world and put it in motion, and that motion caused the stones to transform into creatures of all sorts: antelopes, oryxes, and aurochs; mouflons*, goats, and mountain antelopes; dogs, jackals, and wolves; civets, moles, and mongooses; turtles, crocodiles, and rhinoceroses; elephants, hippos, and bats; horses, asses, and hares. From the eighth stone came the three spirits of the past: Kavi, Payaha, and Alaba**.
As soon as all creatures appeared, a chaos of unseen scale began between them. The creatures were fighting and biting, hurting and eating each other, destroying what fragile balance had already been established in the world. Old Raven couldn’t stand it. With his long and sturdy stick, he flew around, dealing with the ruckus. He separated all animals into packs and herds so that they knew who was of their own kind and who was not. He then drew the boundaries across all the lands to separate the herds. Then he set the rules of who can eat who and what, when and where, how much and how often. Old Raven trained the animals to obey the boundaries, adhere to hierarchies, and follow the rules, and the animals learned quickly. “Ah, finally, some good pupils,” Old Raven said, watching his apprentices build the new order.
Old Raven rested on the lower branch of a dry tree, leaning his stick against the dead trunk. Alaba, the first spirit of the past, trod by, devouring earth and mud. Those were his foods, and he devoured them in loads. Seeing that, Raven was worried that Alaba would eat up all earth, leaving only clay and rocks—nothing would grow on such ground.
“Oi!” Old Raven shouted to the hungry giant. “What do ’ya think you’re doing?” Alaba saw that Old Raven talked to him but didn’t answer. “Ayah, another hungry, stupid brute to deal with,” Old Raven lamented. He grabbed his stick and flew to the giant. He drew a line and said,
“At least do not go beyond this line. Eat whatever you want, but don’t go beyond!”
“What line?” Alaba asked Old Raven.
“This line.”
“What line? I don’t see any.” Alaba put his foot on the line and stepped beyond it.
“Pshe! Are you blind or are you stupid or are you both? You big ones are all the same, aren’t you?” Old Raven ranted. He took his stick and stuck it upwards under Alaba’s nose. “Do you see this?”
“Yes,” Alaba said. Old Raven then found another stick and stuck it up nearby. “Do you see this?”
“Yes, but what is it?”
“It’s your boundary, the one you shouldn’t cross!” Old Raven stuck up a hundred more sticks around Alaba, surrounding a huge chunk of land. Later on, when people saw those sticks, they adopted the idea and began marking their boundaries in the same fashion.
Old Raven then flew away to attend to other issues. Alaba waited for him to disappear behind the horizon and then crossed the line. He waited more to see what would happen. When nothing did, he went on his way, devouring earth and mud.
Later on, people would adopt this habit of not respecting boundaries, too.
***
Alaba made his way south of the Two Mountains, into the Land of Long Hills. Passing through a dell, he found a baby. It was the human child that Cat-Fox dropped while running from Old Raven. Alaba picked up the sleeping child and raised it to his eyes. Is this edible or is it not? he thought. Suddenly, the child woke up and screamed.
“Oh-oh, not edible,” Alaba muttered and tried to rock the child. But the hungry infant kept on screaming louder and louder. “Oh-oh, not good. Not good.”
A herd of aurochs was passing nearby. A cow heard the child’s cry and separated from the herd. She fed the child to calm him down. Alaba then put it in a hare’s nest to sleep.
All the nearby creatures came to help. The cow kept on nursing the infant until it grew stronger. Horses brought fruits, roots, and edible herbs when the boy got his baby teeth. Dogs brought raw meat when his teeth became stronger. An antelope taught the kid to stand and run. A wolf from a nearby cave showed the kid how to hunt. Mongooses from the plains up north coached the kid on how to hide. Alaba himself trained the kid to be strong and healthy. Found-in-the-Dell was the name given to the boy, and he was the first one in the line of Outlanders.
Alaba, having fulfilled his duties, went on to roam the world and eat the earth. The animals returned to their herds and packs, and Found-in-the-Dell was left alone. He was sixteen—the age of initiation. He gathered gifts—hides, meat, wood, and stones—and went north, to the confluence of the River and the Semse, where, as he had been told by his caretakers, the tribe he was stolen from still lived.
On his way, he passed by a hole where Cat was still hiding.
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“Watch your step!” Cat said from her cover.
“Why?” Found-in-the-Dell asked.
“Because the earth is full of things. Some of them interesting, some of them dangerous. All of them deserve attention.”
Found-in-the-Dell found the advice sound. He decided to stay near the Cat’s den for the night. He went out into the fields and caught a young gazelle. Together with Cat, they stripped the gazelle of its skin and separated meat from bones. Found-in-the-Dell was about to eat the meat, but Cat stopped him.
“You shouldn’t eat it raw,” she said.
“Why?”
“Raw meat is cold and unpalatable. Besides, it may still be home to the gazelle’s spirit, which may become your curse. This is how you do it.” Cat raked together a pile of dry grass and brushwood and took two flintstones. She struck the stones—a flash sparked from between them and set the brushwood on fire. Found-in-the-Dell was amazed at the sight of it. Cat then waited till the brushwood burned into hot charcoal and put the meat on poles above them. Soon, the meat was cooked, and the two of them savored their supper. Found-in-the-Dell was delighted and vowed to always treat meat this way.
When the morning came, Found-in-the-Dell was ready to leave, and Cat said to him,
“Hold tight to your belongings!”
“Why?”
“Because thieves are all over the world. You never know when and where you may become a victim of a theft.”
“But what is theft?”
When Cat explained what theft was, Found-in-the-Dell zealously demanded that Cat teach him the art of it—he felt this skill might be of use to him. Cat gladly agreed, and for the next two moons, Found-in-the-Dell was taught the art of theft. The first rule of theft, Cat explained, was that it is the art of taking things. To learn that, Found-in-the-Dell took twenty claws from civets who left them on the shore while bathing. The second rule to know, Cat told the young man, was that it is the art of getting away with the things taken. To learn that, Found-in-the-Dell stole thirty teeth from dogs while they were sleeping, and then ran away when they woke up. The third rule, Cat said, was that sometimes, a thief has to take things by force and then escape. To learn that, Found-in-the-Dell had to steal strength from hares. Hares used to be big and strong before that; and when Found-in-the-Dell stole their strength, they became small and weak.
When Cat tried on the civets’ claws, put in dogs’ teeth, and got hares’ strength, Found-in-the-Dell asked her naively,
“Is there a fourth rule?”
“Yes,” Cat said. “The fourth rule is very simple: never trust another thief!”
With a roar, her claws and teeth out, her yellow eyes sparkling with hunger, Cat pounced on Found-in-the-Dell. The man jumped away, bursting the smoldering coals from a nearby fire into Cat’s face. Cat yelled and rolled away, enveloped by the embers. Found-in-the-Dell ran away. Taught by the antelope, Found-in-the-Dell ran fast—so fast that Cat could not catch up with him.
This was how Cat received black spots all over her body.
***
Found-in-the-Dell ran away from Cat, leaving all his gifts near her den. There was no use returning; he went forward empty-handed. It felt bad, but he was hoping that it wouldn’t matter too much. He was going to his relatives, after all—surely, they would understand and accept him even without gifts.
Soon, dejected, tired, and dirty, he reached the confluence of the River and the Semse and met up with the people who lived there—his people. They accepted him as their guest but rejected him as their relative. They just didn’t see how he was one of them: they cut their hair—he didn’t. The people ate vegetables and fruits—he ate meat. The people covered their groins with cloths—he didn’t. The people were all initiated by the age of sixteen—he wasn’t. The people knew the rules of Old Raven—he did not. The people were cared for by the four sisters, had clans and families, had names starting with Tied-to- and Covered-by- and Born-from-. He had none of that, and his name literally said that he was found.
“Found in a dell,
Lost in a cave,
Washed up the spring,
Eaten by a hippo!”
they chanted with laughter, and that was the most insulting for Found-in-the-Dell.
“But I am yours!” he cried. “I’m your own child, but I was stolen!”
“Well, that was a tragedy,” the people responded. “But what’s happened—happened. You’re not one of us now.”
Angry and disgusted, Found-in-the-Dell left the people and trod back to the south. On his way, he noticed a young girl gathering herbs on a hill slope. It was Born-from-the-Wind, the daughter of the tribe’s most respected man—the one who mocked Found-in-the-Dell the most. Found-in-the-Dell was mesmerized by the girl’s beauty.
His first urge was that of an instinctive one—to steal her, but his consciousness suppressed it. He thought, I was stolen myself, and that ruined my life. Why would I ruin the life of this girl, knowing how it turned out for me? He wanted to go on, but then he thought, But it was not my fault that I was stolen! Yet these people do not accept that argument and do not take that back. They don’t care about my life, so why should I care about anybody else’s? This put him in a difficult position. For many wind blows, he sat there pondering until the girl noticed him and their eyes met. Her innocent black eyes stared at him in bewilderment. Her round face smiled slightly. Found-in-the-Dell could not listen to his consciousness anymore—he forced the girl onto his shoulder and ran away.
He was the first man to steal a bride from her family, and her family did not take it well. When they found out what happened, they chased after the thief with stones and sticks, with cries and curses. Found-in-the-Dell ran back to the Land of Long Hills, but there was nowhere to hide there. He tried to ask the animals who had cared for him for help, but none of them wanted to help a thief. With his stolen bride, he roamed aimlessly around the Two Mountains, until he stumbled into a Low Valley west of them. This valley was patronized by a lone bull named Jba. Jba was a vicious creature, but he was strong and capable. Having no other options, Found-in-the-Dell asked the bull to guard him, and the bull agreed.
Bull Jba fended off the angry mob. The mob retreated but cursed Found-in-the-Dell with their words, and those curses were so strong they materialized into spirits of their own. They became the first demons to hunt men, and Jba became men’s first patron.
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* - Wild species of sheep; IRL can still be found in Cyprus and in the Caspian region.
** - /ˈkavi/; /ˌpajaˈha/; /ˌalaˈba/