Homecomer (WIP) Extracts

BTW coming that gives context…

Prickly heat. I hang my legs in the rich umber water. The river is swollen, fast and deep, temperatures escalating. We zig zag our way against the flow, utilising wind and arm. It’s slow going, excruciatingly slow considering what we’re running from. Branches, nets of vegetation and even entire trees share the surface with us, demand right of way as they follow the current. We spend most of our time moving to the side, politely. Inside the boat under layers of canvas and cloth the heat is intense and, though I should be covert, we’ve reached this compromise. To anyone spying, I’m a pair of legs, material hiding the rest of me. I could be anyone. Someone who belongs here. Plenty of brown legs and hidden faces around these parts.

            Kale’s smoke drifts back to me. He’s standing proprietorial on the prow. From my spot on the starboard side I can only see his thick, hard legs, his bare feet, the rest of him cut by canvas roof, but I can smell the harsh, swampy tang of the local tret. It tickles my memories, dislodges something. There aren’t any memories there, just very early impressions, ghosts of a life that never got started. I must have smelt this tret then.

            How far from here was I born? Was it to the west in the mountain peaks, red and unmoving? Or was it upriver in the farmland, a hut surrounded by sustenance for everyone? Or here on the river? There used to be villages, floating but anchored, a whole society who lived, travelled, worked, played, all on the water. We’ve passed too many empty shacks, too many holed boats, too many overgrown jetties, the river pulling us all back into herself. No life. I may once have been born here, but few are anymore.

            I say here, but I don’t know where I am, not really. I tried picturing it on the map in my old guide book, or on the scans I studied before we came, the old ones made before the tech ban, but the thin line of blue was nothing more than ornamentation. All my attention was on the city. I’d never see outside the walls, so why bother? I doubt the maps were even accurate. Boundaries are fluid. Close to the shore, weeds and lilies bunched and clumped so it’s impossible to tell where the river ends and land begins. If I fall in it could take days of wading and swimming before I could rest.

My legs are getting numb so I let myself fall back into the boat, pull my wet limbs inside the curtained realm. She is long and thin, carved, I assume, in one piece from the trunk of the enormous trees that appear, solitary and monolithic, across the landscape.

The deck is filled with cargo, sealed bags, boxes, rusty metal cans. I’ve made a bed for myself on empty rice sacks. It’s wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder and roughly the length of ten adults lying single file. The crew move around easily, balanced on the edges, jumping from one side to the other like birds flitting branches. They shift sails, push poles into the river bed, trail oars making us gently arc with the water. Inside, us three passengers have little to do. The child can entertain herself, but periodically boredom and tiredness erupt in tears and snot. Geddi fiddles, unties and reties parcels, chews on pieces of fruit, a needle and thread appears and rags begin to form clothes.

            I shake my head, drag my hair back from my face where my sweat has plastered it. I don’t even have anything to tie it back with. All my belonging were left in the hotel, just what I had in my satchel. The clothes I’m wearing, my scarf and the fake headlace. I wear it day and night now, since that’s what everyone else does. Out here, someone not wearing a headlace would be immediately noticeable.

***

This is the third spin on the river and I’ve started to relax. As distance grows between us and the city, I feel safer. I know it’s an illusion. For me, nowhere on this moon is safe. I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be anywhere. But nature works on me, the water caressing my skin, the ephemeral breeze toying with my hair, the colours soothing. Red peaks on the horizon, the rainbow chaos of the riverbank, greens and browns, pinks and yellows, faded paint on decaying shanties, rust and mould, flowers and fruit. I can almost let go, feel the tension washing away in our wake, capsized by our ripples. But then the signs come again. Every five minutes or so, another. Two bright silver poles, their gleaming cleanliness standing hard against the soft entropy around them. A perfectly geometric blue rectangle adorned with white letters of the bureaucratic language that replaced the different dialects, the ethnic markers flattened by Law Two of the junta: There is one language. There is one people. Each sign is identical and reads Freedom through Submission.

***

Nightfall and the river comes alive. I have a lantern but the second I turn it on I am encased in insects. In the dark I can feel the bites redden, the sticky itchiness amplified. The noises are something I will never get used to. Screams and cries, chirps and rasps. Some of them almost seem to be words, and I suppose they are really, just not a language open to me. This is mine. Get out of here. I’m single, I’m available…

            Coreng is the expert on wildlife. He’d have studied for months before an offmoon trip, be able to identify the local wildlife by sight and sound, smell too sometimes. Dardja would joke about taste. I imagine them beside me, the three of us lying on the deck with full stomachs and satisfied muscles, a day of hiking, exploring, listening to Coreng talk about plumage, mating rituals, lifespans and wingspans.

            “Birdsong,” he’d say, “is evidence of culture. It’s taught, rather than innate. Passed on from parent to child the way we do with fairy tales and drawing and reading. Passing on a culture, traditions, conventions, from one generation to the next, keeping it alive, keeping it dynamic.”

            He had windows into other worlds. Has. Why am I using the past tense when I think about them?

            Culture and traditions. Who would I be if I hadn’t been handed over at the port? If I’d been raised here, had survived. Would I work for the regime? Would I be out on the boats like Agaz? Would I keep my head down or try to rise up?

            What would have been passed onto me by my birth parents? What songs would they have taught me to sing?