Ninety to Nothing

Three golden months while summer on us stole
I have read your joyful tale another time,
Breathing more freely in that larger clime
And learning wiselier to deserve the whole.
Your Spirit, Master, has been close at hand
And guided me, still pointing treasures rare,
Thick-sown where I before saw nothing fair
And finding waters in the barren land,
Barren once thought because my eyes were dim.
Like one I am grown to whom the common field
And often-wandered copse one morning yield
New pleasures suddenly; for over him
Falls the weird spirit of unexplained delight,
New mystery in every shady place,
In every whispering tree a nameless grace,
New rapture on the windy seaward height.
So may she come to me, teaching me well
To savour all these sweets that lie to hand
In wood and lane about this pleasant land
Though it be not the land where I would dwell.

The drive north had begun again leaving the little valley, with its ribbons of silver streams that wrapped around it like a present, far behind. We left it entrenched with mud and the tracks of the Tuchuk that rolled over it, perhaps forever changed, because it would know we had been there. We left it without another thought as our hungers, our thirsts took us forward, to the north, to the future. All that we take with us is our lives, our family, what we hold passionately deep inside ourselves. Even a beautiful blossom has to be dried and pressed if it is to survive the very nature of our existence.

Within the inner core of the harriga though is still a rich way of living, the neucleus motion never ceasing in it's energy. Slaves swarming over, between, under and around the wagons, spread out into the herds like the pulse running through the veins. The men driving the body of the entire camp, the people, the bosk, the kaiila, the sleen onward to a new better destination in raucous cries, whistles and shout. Head 'em up ... Mooooove 'em out. The women creating the sense of home that we carry with us where ever we go, tending to the inner workings of our people, the meat, the hides, our weak, our hearts and souls in renewal everyday.

I had felt as if I'd fallen somewhere between arriving here a stranger, untrusted, unaware and unaccustomed to my new world. It had taken me time to dust off my knees, check to see if I bled from a major artery, take in whether anything had broken inside. I ached. I ached all over from the tumble and afraid the tribe was leaving me behind. That sprint forward to catch up left me winded, quiet at times .. yes, steeped deep in contemplations.

I felt like Me too when I first saw him, running after the others, wanting so much to fit in and whopping everyone in the head with the end of my unbalanced lance until I began to doubt. I began to doubt I ever could. I began to doubt whether I could keep my promise to Fonce ... to live. Living is not merely surviving what comes but taking hold and finding more than just breath. It is seizing it with both arms wide in a tight embrace and refusing to be washed away in the currents.

My story differs from the boy's. It did not take facing the extreme for me to grasp hold. It was just catching the hand of one of the women and leaping to the back of her mount as she set the beast to a furious run. She drove me back to life with the feel of power beneath me, the power of the Tuchuk on the move, the feel of the wind stinging my cheeks, not in a gentle kiss but the force of it's will against mine, with the fragrance and taste of leather and bosk grease, the aroma of sweat, blood and tears ... the mingling of tens of thousands determined to not just survive, not even just live but thrive despite their stumblings, despite their aches, their sorrows and even their doubts at times. I filled my lungs with it. I inhaled it until it hurt. I was breathless, I was exhilarated, I was burning inside with the rawness of it.

My heart and mind was still racing ninety to nothing when we returned and the kaiila Mistress lifted me on her shoulders metaphorically. In one sentence she changed my life. She saw the spark and blew the tiny ember to a glowing fire. I could help exercise the kaiila in the northern camps, not just feed them and groom them but ride. I was the newest of the kaiila clan slaves. There were no words to express the feeling, the thrill, the joy I felt. I felt. This was the only thing that had been able to slip through the emptiness, the lonliness of not being with him. She had cut through the wall of nothingness letting in a small sliver of light into the darkness.

Through that fissure, the floodgates opened and the tears finally began to streak my cheeks. With cries that would wake the rest of the harriga, I danced. I danced a dance to life and living.