Thank God You're Alive!

Chapter Three

… And You Still Haven’t Decided.

And it didn’t end there.  (Now, wasn’t that a surprise?)

You’d no sooner gotten back to your side of the river, with three dead bodies, than you were assaulted by your own people’s demands for vengeance.  You tried to explain that you’d ventured over there with purely peaceful motives, and you think their tribe’s chief would’ve met you on those terms, but you hadn’t counted on being followed.  By braves from your own tribe.

And look what happened, everyone said.  Those barbarians across the river can never be trusted!

But…

You tried to think of a convincing rebuttal, but there was no point.  Three young braves were dead, and the rest of them were screaming for blood.  So you’d really only made things worse.

Fortunately, it was getting dark, so you managed to stall long enough for everyone to simply get tired and go to bed.  (After you’d given the dead young men their proper, respectful burials.)  And as you finally laid down in your own hut for the night, you could feel pretty sure that your young braves wouldn’t run off and attack across the river without your leadership.  (Or at least without your permission.)

So, for the first time in many nights…  in weeks… you fell into a deep, profoundly peaceful sleep.

Which was something, you had to admit.

*

But now it’s several months later.  It’s autumn, and the strangers are back on the riverbank, approaching you with outstretched arms of friendship, of comradeship, and you still don’t have an answer for them…

Because the decision wasn’t any clearer when you awoke the next morning.  Actually, it got even harder.

Yes, you’d managed to calm everybody’s lust for revenge.  There was hunting to do, and crops to be tended, so you figured out ways to keep the young men busy.  Which kept their minds– temporarily– off of killing, off of “revenge.”  And eventually life in the village returned to “normal.”  But underneath all the routine, there was an unease that announced that, somehow, life had changed.  For better or for worse, no one could tell, but somehow something had changed.

The unease was like constantly looking over your shoulder.  Maybe the men from the other side of the river were going to attack you.  It’d happened before, unexpectedly.  (Just as your people had done many times before, to them.)  And you didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

Maybe something else bad was going to happen.  Everyone– you included– seemed to have an uneasy sense of foreboding.

You consulted with your uncle, who was the village shaman.  He sensed it, too, but he had no answers.  Not even any decent guesses.  You could’ve asked him to make something up– your father had done that often enough, you knew– but you didn’t even know what to suggest.  So life just went on… uneasily.

And then one day, it happened.

It couldn’t have been more than a week later, and up from the riverbank came a hue and cry like you wouldn’t believe.  Because a sizeable party of people had been spotted fording the river, and they were heading toward the village.

But they weren’t a screaming band of marauding warriors.  They were a dozen older men– walking slowly, without weapons– and as many women.  And a very old woman, and a small child.

The child was being carried on a pallet by four of the men.  The old woman, the headman’s mother (whom you recognized even from a distance), seemed to be hovering over the child.

And them yes, you recognized the headman himself.  The woman walking at his side must’ve been his wife.  What the hell was all this?

Well, you soon found out.

Your first reaction was to worry about how your own warrior-braves were behaving.  A small group of them had rushed down to the riverbank, and they were yelling and gesticulating menacingly at the (obviously) meek band of visitors.  So you rushed down, yourself, and ordered them to stand off.  They moved back, grumbling, but wouldn’t go back to the fields, where they belonged.  It was harvest time, after all, and they had better things to do (you’d think) than harass a few innocent old people and a sick boy.

By the time you got back to your “visitors,” your mother had the situation well in hand.  She and the other chieftain’s mother– the two medicine women for their respective tribes– had taken to each other like sisters, and they’d ordered the men to take the small boy to the large hut your mother used for treating ill members of your tribe.  This would not be received well by some of the hotter heads among your people.  (You noticed that most of the women and children were milling around, shifting suspiciously, not missing a single move these two old women made.)

You exchanged a wary glance with your lifelong enemy, the other tribe’s chieftain, but you both waited to approach each other until your mothers came back out of the “healing hut” and told you what they were up to.

Finally they appeared– together, as though consulting each other was the most natural, time-honored thing in the world– and solemnly motioned both of you two men to join them inside your own hut.  (You were mildly surprised when your mother callously shooed your own wife, and a couple of the kids, outside so that the four of you could be alone.  And you could hear the indignant muttering from the restive crowd outside the hut, once your wife was out there with them and undoubtedly complaining about the lack of “respect” she’d been shown.  Oh well.)

Inside the hut, the two old women sat down beside each other, and motioned for the two of you men to sit opposite.  Almost touching. Your mother did most of the talking.

Quietly, she explained the situation to you.

This little boy, who looked to be about five or six years old, was indeed sick.  By the looks of it, he was showing symptoms of rheumatic fever: a really high fever, wrenching stomach pains, violently jerky muscle movements, but scariest of all: swelling and inflammation in the large joints (knees, elbows, ankles) that somehow “migrated” from one joint to another every few hours.  As if he were somehow “possessed.”

The boy, by this time, was sweating, shivering, moaning and muttering in his confused sleep.

All of which was nothing you yourself (with no medical background) hadn’t seen before.  Unfortunately, you’d seen dozens of children die before.  Of this (and other equally frightening, unexplainable) diseases.  That was life, circa 8000 B.C.

But, your mother quietly explained, this boy– and his fate– was different.

This boy, apparently, had been singled out by his tribe’s (the ones across the river) shaman.  On the day of his birth–

– No, the other woman corrected her.  Actually, even before that:  His birth had been foretold.  By signs.  Signs the shaman had recognized.  (And feared.)

This boy, at any rate, was special.  The shaman couldn’t be more specific, but this boy was somehow special.  Whether he was destined to grow up to be an earth-changing figure– a never-before-seen great leader, a bringer of unheralded healing powers, or some other sort of wonder worker– or whether it was merely his birth that was a unique sort of “sign,” this boy (the shaman had said) must be protected at all costs.  Beyond the care that any normal child would receive.

And now he was ill.  Seriously ill.  On the brink of death, if his fever continued on the same path as other children the old women had seen.

You turned to your lifelong nemesis, who was now sitting here (in your hut, inches away from you) for corroboration.  And he nodded his head.  What the old women said was true.  It wasn’t just some old-women’s superstitions at work.  The shaman had spoken true:  The boy, somehow, was a herald, an outsized hero-to-be, a once-in-many-generations avatar of greatness, of change, of hope.  Even being near him– even at his young age– one could feel it, sense it.  It was unexplainable, but palpable.  There was “a presence.”  An aura of elevated spirituality about the boy…

So he must be cherished.  Nurtured.  He could not be lost.  He could not be allowed to die.  Or even to grow up weakened in the heart, as the old women knew could easily happen to those who did survive this disease.  He must be saved, at any cost.

Which is why the headman had taken the extraordinary step of crossing the river and appealing to your mother for help.

It had been an enormous risk.  An unarmed party of old men and women fording a river into enemy territory, was just asking to be slaughtered.  So call it foolish, were it not so desperately required.  There’s been no alternative.  Your mother’s knowledge of healing herbs and remedies was clearly something powerful enough (in the other medicine woman’s opinion) to merit taking this odds-defying chance.  And they’d pulled it off.  They’d gotten here, the two women had met and conferred, and your mother seemed to know how to proceed.

Thank the gods.

Which left you and the other headman on your own.  Uncomfortably together, and unsure how to proceed next.

Because the two old women were clearly going to be spending all of their time in the healing hut with the boy.  The special boy.  And the chief couldn’t just up and leave.  Turn tail, now that his ward had been delivered, and run along home.

So, for the time being, you were stuck with each other.

…