Seeing the End

Oh, well, here I am again. It's been a while. Today I was assaulted by my Prehistoric setting. You may recall, you may not, it was many years ago now, that I was unconvinced by the naming of the women characters in my story. Moon Dancer and Shadow of the Stag made sense to me, their names and the reasons for their names came easily. The coming of age for Moon Dancer natural and flowing as though it arrived in a dream and, very probably, it did. But the rest? The tribe were not real to me despite my best efforts, I brought them forth with effort as though passing something uncomfortable. I wanted to do right, I could manage the NSFW section - that came fully-formed one evening - but the important parts? No.

One of the aspects of this, it's always been there, is dissatisfaction with using English for the setting - it doesn't feel right. I am doing my best to restrict vocabulary, to carry that Prehistoric feeling and not diminish meaning, rather to force the reader to see the connections between things that the society I write about does in their language. I also very deliberately looked into Urdu for some of the words: mother, sister. Proto-Indo-European for blood. Variations for aunties (something missing in my first run through of attempting this side of things here).

Over the last few days I found myself dwelling on the coming of age for girls, the point at which everything shifts in perspective and the biology of that. And I thought about how our society forces fear and shame into proceedings, how that is reinforced in so many areas of the Patriarchy and also on the research that shows that the first calendars were created by and for women. The primacy of that power, for power it is, and the fear it evokes in the men. What if men were not in charge as they are not in my Prehistoric setting and, instead, a community of women devised ways of coming to terms with things?

My desire to turn this into more than a setting, to conjure forth a plot, remains however and so the scene is bent to the will of the direction. One thing is clear though, I have a better naming system, one that feels much more natural and realistic. One in which the fear of the Patriarchy may have sprung from, for men can destroy but only women can dabble in the forces of creation and death as easily as preparing food or hunting prey or gathering shelter.

Analysis once again provided by 750words.com that, if you haven't already, you should sign up for.

Rating: PG-13 (violence and sexual-content[?])

Feeling mostly upset, and concerned mostly about death - well, I'd quibble that, but I can see how it comes from the text, see what you think.

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Certain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: You - interesting!

46 minutes at 40 words per minute

"Amu?"

"Vo'sha?"

"I..." voiceless, she showed the tell-tale sign of blood on the legs, smeared in the barely visible hair showing just at the edge of the skins hanging loose. Looking back up, her eyes welled with emotion, potential tears or shock of pain - neither achieving dominance, but full of doubt and fear.

The older one smiled comfortingly, "Ah," warmth and amusement, a comforting noise, "My warmth to you, it is time. Is there pain? Does the inner move like a snake or beat like a skin drum?"

Mute, the child nodded, to which was unclear.

Returning the nod, and placing a comforting arm across the shoulders, the older one bade her follow. "We must find the roots, you will chew them, as Annui do, as I have, as you have seen."

"I know, Amu."

She was barely asleep, in her usual spot on the nest, toward the edge so as to look down as sleep claimed her and view as she woke and dozed through the night. Somethipng had changed. It was familiar, as though seen in a dream or obscured by the spray of a waterfall, but it was new and almost threatening. Inside her she could feel movement, matching the wash of the rain falling through the upper canopy, and in the distance there was a single skin drum booming through the falling of the water.

Breathing, beside her, behind her, all around and all at once. A face appeared over her own, wreathed in feather and smoke, eyes peering from dark charcoal pools that hid the lines of the face. Ethereal, like a spirit's, but she had never seen one, only heard others try to explain what they saw and experienced.

"It is time" words slid from a blood red mouth, framed by darker streaks of dried actual blood rather than dye from the fruits and berries. "You must come with us."

Arrested by fear, feeling concern, she rose from her position dream-like and with dread. "Amu?" she asked, in a voice that wavered and stood on the precipice of something more primal and scared. "Amu?"

"No," a voice she almost recognised but could not place from somewhere behind, "There is no Amu or Anu here, no Abba, no Abu. Here there are only Behannu."

Her lip quivered, her eyes screwed up, and her cheeks flushed, but all was as naught to the roiling beneath the skin, just below which she was screaming. Night swam, the trees swayed, the rain fell, and she knew the root was doing its work - taking the feelings from within and covering them, altering that veil between the worlds where she clambered across the boughs led by the terrifying figure.

Face covered in charcoal and red, marred by dried blood, white picking out strange details, atop a mass of fur and hair the hid any semblence of shape or limbs, but moving with the steady rhythm she associated with those with whom she travelled. Legs sprouted, matted with wet hair, but it was not water that held it down and all around the smell, the pungent aroma. She knew this, smelled it before, it was the protection of blood magick, the bond of the tribe and the troop, the lure for the animals used as prey or protection. It kept the adder and the wolf at bay, it brought the fowl and the stag, it offended the Brown One, it called to the Spirits. She had heard the chants, listened to their words, but why was it here in the rain and why was it so much more powerful and concentrated?

They did not go far, never taking her eyes from the figure before her: whether in fear or fascination she could not tell nor wanted to discern. Only the terrible feeling that it had come for her, that it had arrived in the nest.

Now they stood at the base of a grand bonfire, hissing in the rain, surrounded by older trees cast into darkness and shadow by the constantly moving light of the flames licking behind the hairy figure. Around her, she was aware that there were many others of the tribe, all stood waiting at the edge of the light, sheltered from the water by the fronds of the trees but close enough to feel the dubious warmth. And always the cloying smell, almost sweet in the nostrils, filling the air and the spaces between.

"It is the blood," the voice of the figure was soft but it carried, and something about the sound made the night ripple like a reflection in the pond when a rock was thrown in far off, or when the shadows danced on the smooth surface of the black rocks by the flaming crater. "Our behan, she joins us." The figure turned to show the terrible face, the mockery of features, but this time she saw more. White and black and red and brown swirled and mixed, constant motion, as the world around them began to writhe and creak. Hissing flames rose and died, toiled and twisted.

A hand reached out and a finger took some of the blood from atop her leg, near the source, and then annointed the tree. "Our blood is life," a rhythm, matching the unseen drum's monotonous plodding, but injected with triumph. A horn blew, high and strong, loud and droning, invading her mind and ears at the same time. She was swaying, she realised, swaying in time.

Once again, the hand, a finger, and then the hand pushed into the earth, human feces nearby, she smelt it a fraction before seeing it illuminated by the fire itself. "Our blood heralds death!" The drum changed, heavy and loud beats, harsh, matching the drone of the horn, the rumble of the eternal breath used to play the logs, and then a cacophony of exclamations all around, unmistakeably of the amu and annui but darker and almost horrifying, her blood seemed cold, her fear insurmountable.

A third time, the hand, a finger, and this time she felt a line of her blood being drawn from her hairline to the end of her nose. "Our blood connects and embraces."

"Behannu." Each syllable drawn out, holding to the former rhythm of the drum, though it was faster and lighter now, the horn had stopped, but the log's eternal breath continued, the ground vibrated and her body hair stood on end as though danger threatened but it was no longer fear that thrilled through her. "Behannu." Again.

The figure before her seemed to have vanished, there was only the flame and the light, around her the sound of the women joined and as one, chanting slowly the word of the sisterhood. "Behannu Bhel, Behannu Bhel." Sisters of Blood, Sisters of Blood.

Light rent as if by a hunter's knife, reality torn as though it were woven grasses, and the smell became all-encompassing.

It was the lakeside, it was summer, a sun shone down but the colours were wrong and disorienting. The stilt-house, the fishing nets, all was it was always, as it had been all her life, but it was wrong, twisted somehow. A wolf on hind legs walked into the lake, the waters turning red with the blood of the troop and the tribe, the medicine man pulled limb from limb by unseen hands. Amu stood, smiling down at her, before the stone maul obliterated her skull. She felt the spray of the blood, warm and unnatural, that which bursts forth rather than that which protects. Screaming, human fear rank in the air, and the flames closed in around the house to consume the wood and the food and the humans within. The wound healed, reality returned, along with the faint light of dawn.

She stood.

"You have seen?"

Without knowing how, she knew the response: "I have been shown."

"I am Death Blood, oldest of the troop, keeper of the magick." Matter-of-fact, as though informing her of the weather that day, but now the horrific hairy thing had become the elder of the tribe. "You will choose your name this day, a name of the red, a name of Behannu Bhel."

"I am That Which Protects," another annui of the tribe stepped forth, "I greet you."

"I am She Who Knows, I greet you."

"I am Blood of the Tides, I greet you."

"I am Death to Those That Fail, I greet you."

"I am Life of the Forest, I greet you."

"I am Red on the Furs, I greet you."

"I am Power in the Arm, I greet you."

"I am Last of the Morning, I greet you."

"I am Keeper of the Tales, I greet you."

Her Amu stepped forth last, "I am The Red Moon, I greet you." And then she took a final step and embraced her daughter tightly and with relief and love and fear and excitement all at once. The all-encompassing warmth of the bond between them. "And whom do we greet?"

She Who Knows seemed discomforted. "You have been shown," she said almost as a question. Was the response the wrong one? "You did not see, you were shown." And the reaction of those around told her that this was unusual. But none challenged or spoke. Even the elder, Death Blood, she corrected herself, seemed unmoved and tight-lipped.

"I am Seer of the End," said Seer of the End, for she understood what she had been shown, accepted the great responsibility and implicitly knew that she must share all and be known by it. "The Great Spirit... No. I was shown the end. I saw life," she looked up at the sky framed by the break in the upper canopy, noted the rest following her gaze. "I saw death," and she looked round at each of the women in turn, some met her eye, others looked away. "Wolves walking on hind legs, blood in the water and-" Suddenly she could go no further. Tears came.

"Seer of the End," low, careful, respectful, a tone of reaching out and enfolding with love and protection, "You have been given a great burden. You need not carry it alone. Behannu Bhel carry as one. You must eat, you must rest, we can discuss later. Your name is for Behannu alone, it is not for the world. There shall be another name, you will know it, and that is for sharing, for Vo'sha you are no more, Seer of the End, Behannu you shall remain."