“Kiri!
Come on child, I am finished for today. We are going home.”
Tunaka
stood up and straightened his back with a grunt. He wiped his dirt-encrusted
hands on his rough tunic. He had spent many long hours preparing the rich soil
that characterised the fertile pocket of the Dofr’ame forest. It was now a fine
tilth, perfect for planting. Tomorrow morning he would sow beans and pulses. In
the afternoon he would perhaps take his bow and hunt in the brooding forests.
Unlike the days of his childhood, the forests were now teeming with game. For
now though, the sun dipped towards the horizon. He could almost taste the stew
his wife had spent the afternoon preparing. He visualised it bubbling away over
the firepit. His stomach rumbled in anticipation; he had earned his supper
today.
He
heard a giggle behind him and the pounding of tiny feet. He turned to see his
five-year-old daughter hurrying over from where she had been playing in the
dirt. Her smiling face warmed his heart, although he scowled when he saw her
intended route.
“Go
around, Kiri, not on the ground I have prepared!” he cried in mock frustration
and anger.
She
came to a sudden stop and then ran around the side of the prepared bed. She
sprung towards him and he caught her and embraced her in his arms. He revelled
in the fierce, tight hug she gave in return. Her smell mixed with the aroma of
the rich earth filled his nostrils, and he felt content and happy. His life was
more than he could ever have dreamed of at her age. Reluctantly, he set her
back down on the ground, kneeling down to her level.
“Come
on now, my sweetling, it will be dusk in an hour,” he said, attempting to dust
the soil off her clothes. “I need your help to carry the tools home.”
“Yes,
Ubaba,” Kiri replied, picking up a wooden rake and standing to attention like a
militiaman. “Why are you afraid of the dark? You always finish your work in the
fields before the sun has set.”
“It
is force of habit, sweetling,” Tunaka replied, smiling as he signalled for Kiri
to begin the stroll home from the fields. As the sun settled low over the
horizon other workers could be seen leaving their fields and plots, journeying
to their homes and hovels clustered here and there amid the fields.
“I
asked my friend Tablis why,” Kiri said, as they walked together. “She said it
is because you are afraid of the ghosts that rise from the old city over
there.”
As
she spoke, she pointed to the shattered ruins of what was once the city of Acarross,
standing beside the river. Its once mighty walls were falling into disrepair,
still charred by the cleansing fires of nearly two decades before. So intense
were the flames that some parts had melted almost to glass. Some of the stones
had been robbed for building projects elsewhere, but the place had mostly been
left to its ghosts.
Tunaka
gave it a fleeting glance, no more than that. His gaze returned to their path
ahead. The place was imprinted on his psyche, a place of
monstrous evil, oppression and black cruelty. It was best not to cast one’s
shadow in that fell place; between that and the forest that was once the abode
of the foulness. Tunaka
shivered despite the warmth of the sinking sun on his back. He
needed to remind himself that the evil was gone, that the demons of the past
were no more, yet always there was a gnawing doubt. He knew what was buried
there.
“We
were an enslaved people once, Kiri.” he replied, as they trudged homeward, his
daughter carrying the rake over her shoulder like a spear.
“Years
before your mother and I were blessed by your birth, we were captive here in
these same fields, fenced in by evil monsters that haunted the forests. Chained
by cruel men who once dwelt in that accursed pile of stones.”
“What
happened to the monsters and the cruel men, Ubaba?” Kiri enquired, looking
suspiciously at the old city.
“That
is a tale of how we freed ourselves from the terror of both. Of the days of
Nurarna and the northern warrior, Kaziviere, the Gutspiller….”
The
sun sank as he continued to tell the story and as they neared their home their
shadows grew long in the telling.
