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The Elements
Category:
Fantasy
Type: Fiction
Pages: 312
Copyright: January 30 2011
When Kgosi, ruler of the Kishnu people refuses to halt his invasion of the neighboring villages of the Lungi people, and Nkosana, ruler of the Lungi people has ordered an act which unintentionally offends a foe that neither ruler could possibly defeat, Baba, the elder Kishnu sangoma or diviner takes drastic measures to preserve both indigenous tribes of the Earth.
The Elements is a story that takes place millions of years ago on Nchiyamolekuli or as we call it in modern times, Pangea, the massive land mass on earth before the division into seven continents. After a major battle in which many lives are lost and the environment is devastated, Baba, the wisest and most trusted adviser to King Kgosi, first exhausts diplomatic means then urges both rulers to leave their lands to seek refuge elsewhere. Baba has learned that the angered foe is Paytah, leader of the Nootau - One of the four elements (Earth-the Onatahi, Wind-the Makani, Water-the Iscindri & Fire-the Nootau) who live within their respective elements on the Earth and at times among the people disguised as human. After months of failed crops and fishing expeditions do not produce enough food for the people on both sides; they are forced to follow Baba's recommendation to leave for Kisiwachamani, a large distant island whose indigenous people may be helpful in supplying the people with food as well as medicine and shelter. In both the Kishnu and Lungi mythology, the island and the body of water between it and Nchiyamolekuli is the resting place for all souls before they are judged and returned to this life through the womb of a woman or animal, depending on their favor or lack of it with the ancestors. Warnings not to go into the waters or visit the island have been passed down for generations but; with the barrenness of their lands and the danger of attack from the Nootau known only to Baba, they are left with no choice. Once there, the Mwilimmoja – the island's only inhabitants led by Nangaza and his wife Ina, agree to aid the Kishnu and Lungi. They only require that the Kishnu and Lungi follow their strict dietary laws and agree to be “prepared”. Nangaza explains that this involves drinking ugolo, a fermented beverage made from the forbidden waters, which will remove all illnesses from the people, thereby preventing the spread of illness to the island's inhabitants. This is only partially true as the “preparation”also links all of the Lungi & Kishnu people physically in a symbiotic manner causing everything done by individuals to affect the whole population, regardless of their tribes. The Mwilimmoja after hearing about the war from Baba, which drove the people to the island in the first place, unanimously decide this must be done as they have done to themselves for centuries to prevent violent wars and maintain a peaceful society. The two kings and their people are so desperate that they agree without question, not having full knowledge of what preparation really is, nor the freedom or bondage that comes along with it. In Book I we follow this story from the invasion of Lungizwe, the main village of the Lungi, by the Kishnu, to the initial encounter with the Mwilimmoja of Kisiwachamani.
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
Had he known that the men of this world would one day abandon their peaceful ways for violent conflicts over the land, the elder would not have encouraged his kinsmen to come to Earth and settle within it as their home. They all would have preferred oblivion. After all, the very reason they left their own planet was to avoid the death and carnage from constant retreats into their past where they had to repeat every event in their history, including the wars exactly as they originally occurred, in order to avoid extinction from the supernova of their sun. The governors called them cowards, separatists, even anti-patriotic before they exiled them to the remote and unforgiving land to live among those who were originally criminals and now defiant like the elder and his men. The former thieves and murderers deemed guilty many times, the final time wrongly so, had refused to repeat their crimes in order to keep the future the same. The elder and those exiled with him were former soldiers, condemned for refusing to fight again, in sanctioned efforts to preserve posterity. They considered themselves revolutionary heroes, and instead of dying a slow death from the harsh climate which they had been confined to on their home planet, they fled. Most of them, upon seeing the planet Earth from afar before they entered its atmosphere, had chosen the water for their element and home for it was the bulk of this world, glowing blue from space with a single, massive stretch of land, green on the edges and tan on the interior, underneath the clouds. Others waited to make their choice until they arrived, and once they did, the new tickling sensation of the growth of plant life drove the next largest group into the land. Some preferred the wind whistling gently in a playful dance in some places and roaring powerfully in others.
The single continent extended almost entirely from the southern to the northern ends of the Earth, but the first human inhabitants had lived only in small, clustered villages in the central lands for years before expanding into organized villages, and there were others isolated on the only large island to themselves. It took much longer on this planet the second time, for life forms other than their kind to develop, so when the first microbes made the waters their home this time, the excitement began at the shores where the water and earth teamed with the wind and embraced in waves along the seashore. Lastly, they spread the news to the fires of the mountains on the Earth, so the wind whistled north the great news to the fires who had preferred a quiet slumber. When awakened, they came running down the sides of the mountains with flames erupting, as the wind ran along with them. There was already plant life in the waters and the land. Now there were microbes in the water. One day there would be men, again.
As they approached the land, the fire could not wait to share that they already had microbes among them in the mountains, in fact, the oldest of the earth. They told the wind brethren first, and their flames grew in laughter, but when they told the earth near the shores, they were surprised to have singed its grasses. The water reached out at the fire in waves to aid the earth, until it vanished, leaving only a thick, gray trail that ascended to the skies until it faded from the earth's wound.
Their world was entirely different, its elements absent on the earth, so they made the only four choices on the Earth that they could. It was only until millions of years later that men, desiring warmth and a means to prepare food that their bodies required, re-kindled the fire brethren and placed a barrier between the fire and the earth with stone. The ones who chose the fire stayed to themselves until then fearing doing harm to the earth's lands and resentful of the water for being the only element greater than themselves. They had left a civilization with great advances in time travel, and each time they reached their most advantageous point, those in power ordered them back into their past. He and the others called stagnation what the leaders celebrated as technological growth. You could take an infant mammal, watch it grow, drive out its instinctual nature, teach it to kindle fire and draw water from the earth, build dwellings in organized villages, and eventually construct machines that could reach the stars. However, it is of no benefit to any if the animal is confined, unable to spread the knowledge beyond its cage, forced to retreat. They had escaped their caged existence, and the elder remembered being the first one refusing to conform. Conformity is a friend to stagnation and resistance its greatest enemy. One gives life, and the other takes it away, which, much more devastatingly than the supernova of their sun, repeatedly drove them into their past on their world.
After a long wait, they were all delighted and curious about the people in erect bodies with limbs and eyes much like their own in their original form. They observed first, studied, and then they took on the bodies of male and female humans and were able to go from elemental form to flesh just as easily as humans could go from being hot to cold or wet to dry. This was a welcome change from the confinement to the elemental form for all except the fire, who quickly learned that they were the most incompatible with human form exceeding the body's temperature far beyond what any man could withstand for more than a few minutes. It was a compromise that was quite acceptable to the fire believing themselves to be much greater than the perishable flesh of man and the only ones who could destroy flesh with a mere touch. The elder walked outside of the izundlu he called home in human form, even though he was alone as he remembered those early days. He sat quickly on a wooden stool outside the entrance with his walking cane in his right hand. He did not need it to aid his movements for he was quite agile for his human age. He carried it instead as a symbol of his status in the Kishnu village as having the wisest counsel and being the most gifted sangoma--the divine healer whose mixtures of herbs were the most effective in preventing illness or reversing misfortune, from angry ancestors and human folly. To the Kishnu, he was the closest one to Kiranu, the Creator of all living things whom no one else, not even the King, could make contact with in this life. He was shorter than most men in the village, and the thin old man made up for what he lacked in girth with wisdom, knowledge of time, and history. Each morning he woke up before the sun, built a fire, presented his herbs before Kiranu, and he listened. He listened to sound...he listened…he listened to the lack of sound. He listened very closely and then...he eliminated unnecessary sounds...it was quiet all around him and from within him. He was ready to receive and give life. The sun was yawning. He gripped the cane tighter, looked up, pulled at his gray and black speckled beard, and was grateful to be alive in this time and space, and although limited, this body. For years, all was peaceful, as men went about their daily affairs, and fear had only a subtle existence. As prosperity from the land and water grew, so did man’s desire for more land and power. Men are not content with even distributions of necessities or power; they must have a ruler to govern them, those who want to rule but serve closely under him and worst yet, those who acquiesce entirely, accept what is given to them, and suffer or die when it is not. The latter group is always the greatest in number. Here, on this world, among these men, great numbers are easily defeated by a single, strong fear. He had advised the king against it, yet his plans to invade the neighboring villages of Lungizwe had persisted for many years and after several battles, the war would begin near the sea. The old man felt nauseatingly nostalgic as he remembered the wars of his home planet so far away and so long ago and the destruction it had caused. Here, on this new world he had only enjoyed a short period of peace, and war, which they loathed had followed them here and reared its ugly face in the people of this planet. Enlightenment from the experiences of his home planet could not be given to the people here. Neither the Kishnu nor Lungi could possibly comprehend worlds and planets with conflicts far away for they had only reached the level of knowledge of existence were phenomena of nature, could only be explained by the forces of evil and good. In the privacy of his thoughts, the elder searched for a way to stop it without interfering with the development of the people, for he knew that he could not run away from conflict this time. They had settled this earth and taken root in the basic elements of it and had to remain.“We were meant to be here...this is our destiny...”said the old man to himself. He smiled and realized that there were no regrets to be had. There are no mistakes with time, except those which we create in our finite minds. We are born when we are meant to be born. We live as long as life chooses to support us or as long as we live within the confines of what it means to be living. There is no sorrow or negative in this world that we call home except for what we bring to it or what we chose to give power over us. The elder pulled at his gray beard, he had a very subtle smile and he looked around him. He gathered himself and was Kishnu again. He was man again...he was god-like among men...as he held out his arms above his head and closed his eyes while waving them as if...he was the wind. He waited for the children to come to him as was their daily routine for stories. On the cane in his hand which he had carved himself were the carvings of the sangomas before him of long ago with their pots of herbs boiling over a fire and incantations on their tongues. The scenes were depicted so well that everyone who looked upon it could smell the herbs with their eyes and he really need not open his mouth to tell a story with it in his hand, he just enjoyed doing so. There were warriors with their weapons and shields in hand ready for battle, painted black against the reddish-brown wood, and at the very top of the cane was a ring of gold and a lion whose front legs climbed upwards on the ring with his claws, while the two hind legs were firmly planted on the flat surface at the top. Long ago he was given the name Misisizwe which in Kishnu tongue means, “Teacher of the Nation” but all of Katal, the largest village in Kishnuizwe, called him Baba, which in Kishnu tongue meant, “father”. When the sun was full and bright the children began running to him shouting, “Baba! Baba!” They surrounded him and sat down onto the colorful beaded mats provided for them. There were eight girls all wearing the famed beaded clothing of the Kishnu, entirely red with a large white stripe of beads going down the middle of the upper and lower body garments. The young boys were dressed in simple animal hide lower garments but their sandals were made with red beads. In Kishnuizwe, red was the color of innocence, as all new born babies were born covered in their mother's red blood. Once they were outside of the womb all of the young girls wore the color red until they were of age to marry and all boys the same until they learned to hunt properly. “Baba tell us the story of the whale!”one of the young boys shouted causing an uproar of more story requests all at once. “No, tell us the one about the boy and his drum!”said another. With an upward then lowering motion of his left hand and a stern smile, the children calmed down and sat down quietly with their legs folded eagerly and the elder began. “A long, long time ago there was a boy named Awotuni. He was walking through the fields to gather tall grasses to make his mama a beautiful basket. While walking through the fields he stopped for a moment to listen to the song of the wezu birds flying above him with their long beaks and bright red and yellow feathers when suddenly, the toes on his right foot begin to throb with stinging pain. He looked down and he had stepped into the home of the ants. The large red ants ran about from the disruption in anger climbing his flesh to avenge the damage to their village. The boy begin to slap his legs with his hands and jump about, yelling aloud, “Intuthwane! Intuthwane!” As the foolish will do, he gave the remainder of the ants' village a strong kick and a huge army of ants and their eggs moved quickly to find shelter elsewhere from the giant legs. The boy stepped back and ran as fast as he could back to his village to find his mama. She would take him to the sangoma for surely he would have a remedy for the pain on his legs. He ran as fast as he could and when he arrived at his village it was very quiet. The boy went into his family home and it was quiet too. There was no sign of his mama or papa. His two brothers were no where to be found. He saw a bucket of water in the same place where his mat used to be and immediately washed his legs. The stinging grew worse instead of better and he began to sob. “Mama....Mama...Papa...where are you?” he left his home and walked through the village crying more loudly and screaming for his parents. He looked up and realized that he was near the home of the village sangoma. He forgot his pain and smelled the herbs. “The sangoma is here...I smell the muthi he is preparing...the evil spirits couldn't have taken him away for he is protected by the ancestors..surely he can help me with the stinging and find my family...” He got near the entrance to the sangomas' hut and shouted, “sangoma...sangoma...help me!” He heard a buzzing noise and turned around with his back to the hut but saw nothing to explain the strange sound. A shadow grew over him and appeared to have two moving parts at the top of it's head. He turned around slowly and there was a sight so frightening he froze where he stood in terror. His legs would not to move. He looked up and saw a great...big...giant ant with two large antennae on top of his head and black claws came out of the side of its mouth. The creature had six legs in all and stood upright. He was the size of a man and his giant eyes were just below a string of black beads around his head. The boy's tongue was still and after a moment of long glances at one another, the intuthwane spoke first. “Umfana intuthwane! Why are you still here!? Everyone was ordered to leave the village! Why do you linger? It is not safe!” The look on Awotuni's face was one of fear and `confusion. Sensing this the intutwane said, “What is your name child?” an he leaned down peering at the boy. “I am called Awotuni..” “Well, Awotuni...it is not safe here. Why did you not leave when told to do so with the other villagers? There has been an attack by the humans on the village south of us...surely, you received the message, its scent is still in the air as we speak – everyone was ordered to evacuate! Did you fall and hit your antennae? Although they look like they are in working order, your behavior seems to dispute that.” “What do you mean sangoma, I am a boy...just look at me...you...are an intuthwane...”the boy said. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” the intuthwane roared with laughter. “You think you are a man-giant? Hmmm..come with me, I have just the muthi for you, clearly you have done something to offend your ancestors...delusion is a common punishment for those who disrupt the balance of the land...Whom or what did you disrupt child?” “I don't know...” said Awotuni. Before the intuthwane could reply the ground began to shake. Awotuni turned around and the sky was dark with something familiar to him. “Intuthwane! What is happening!? What are we going to do!?” There was no reply and when he turned around the intuthwane was gone! He turned back around in fear and looked up at the object in the sky. Tears streamed down his face and then there was instant recognition. The giant object was a pale and had a very subtle light pink color and there were lines of ridges in various spots. He turned his head all the way back and counted five thick...wiggly antennae! “A foot!” he cried. He fell to the ground where he stood and the foot was coming down quickly. He tried to get up but could not. His legs refused to move. He called out to the foot, “Don't hurt me! I Stop! Stop! Can you see me ?” Awotuni knew that in a moment he would be squashed into the ground under him,. He could not get up and walk but he could roll he thought to himself. He rolled and rolled and rolled as fast as he could...the foot was so close he could reach out his hands again and touch it. He rolled until he was no longer under shadow and -” “The foot hit the ground with a loud, crashing thump!”a familiar adult voice interrupted. Baba's body was hunched over as he often did while acting out the story to the children and they were always thrilled. He leaned back up and there behind the last row of children was Kwesi, son of the king, with a smile on his face. “When I was a boy, Baba told me the very same story so many times but I never grow tired of hearing it...””Kwesi! Kwesi!”the children chanted. As they stood up from their mats clapping their hands. Baba stood poised with the walking cane in his right hand. He chuckled and looked at the young warrior with pride for he had as much to do with raising the prince as did Kwesi's father, Kgosi – King and ruler of Kishnuizwe.
“Children, you may go now, it's time for your meal....” said Kwesi.
“No tell us another story! “said a boy on the first row.
“Finish the story Baba!”said another.
“We will continue the story of Awotuni tomorrow..”said the elder. The children stood up clapping and ran off to eat. Kwesi walked up to the elder and lowered his head in respect and the elder nodded to acknowledge him.
“Kwesi...one who is born on Sunday and the son of the king” said Baba.
“Are there any names that you do not know the meaning of Baba?” They both laughed and the elder reached up to touch Kwesi's shoulder. He looked at him and remembered when this warrior was a boy. Now Kwesi stood before him with his iziQu and inGotha – the beaded necklace and golden arm band presented by the king himself to the most courageous hunters and warriors. “One so young as you should not be so highly adorned...there was a time, before your father's father where only the old warriors were so highly rewarded...and this was when he had left his body and began the journey to the next life...”said Baba sternly.
“Warriors of this time don't become elders Baba...”answered Kwesi.
Baba looked at Kwesi and turned away from him and silently poured water into a clay pot. Kwesi cleared his throat and the smile left his face, “Misisizwe, my father will see you now...it is time.” “Misisizwe?” said Baba. Kwesi gave no reply and his face was purposely blank. “An official visit...yes...of course...I will gather my things and come as requested...” said Baba “Misisiwze...Baba...Phenyo and the others have been in place for nearly sixty moons now among the Lungi and the second group of women will be ready to leave for Lungizwe by nightfall...my father seeks your counsel and wishes for you to perform the ceremony...” said Kwesi.
“You know your father has many messengers whom he could have sent for me...”said Baba. Kwesi held his head down and Baba approached him, then used his hand to lift his chin. “You worry about your brother...this is why you have come, is it not?” “Baba...he is not ready...he is not a warrior and my father knows this and forces Chineydu to fight...he has been missing for nearly three days now and he will be killed soon in the days to come...whether by the teeth of a wild animal or with a spear in his hand...my father has ordered that we stop the searches for him.”said Kwesi then he grew silent. Baba took a deep breath, smiled at Kwesi and walked away to pick up an already prepared bag filled with herbs. He would ease Kwesi's mind by speaking with the king about Chineydu, his youngest brother, for distracted warriors are always the first casualties. He touched Kwesi's shoulder again and Kwesi, standing next to the door, motioned with his hand for the elder to exit first, he followed and they walked together, side by side down the road to the home of the King.
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