By G.R. Nanda
For two weeks, Nickel and Farrul worked with the people of the tribe, hunting, cooking and cleaning up after the remnants of the Atlantic Tribe’s activities. They joined in the routines of the tribespeople, oftentimes struggling to keep up with people who had been doing these activities a certain way for their whole lives. Their fingers became chafed and cold when they scrubbed rough stone plates with cold water collected from slimy green kupernacle leaves. While they both struggled, Farrul fared better, having lived in the Desolate Plains of the Atlantic longer. While Farrul could suck off his fingers and move on to the next activity, Nickel would often exhale warm air onto his palms, numb from cold after cleaning with water for several minutes to hours. Farrul and the rest of the tribespeople hardly ever waited for Nickel to finish before moving away for the next task.
The most tedious activity was harvesting kupernacle leaves. In the back of the tribe’s encampment behind all of the huts and squares were rows of a few cows and chickens, all mellow and splotched with strange colors due the power plant accident’s effect on these animals’ forebearers. Behind the cows were dozens of rows of kupernacle plants. Their thick and green stems and leaves fluttered and flapped in the winds, stiff enough to withstand the climate.
When Nickel and Farrul had first been brought to the plants, Nickel had noticed that the patch of plants had been placed in a part of the encampment where there weren’t as many spires and broken power plant towers shadowing the earth. A large gap in the looming spires was directly above the patch, allowing room for the sun, however cold and lifeless it was, to shine down.
After brushing away globs of gooey green and slightly pungent smelling slime that had formed along the leaves, Nickel and Farrul used thin stone blades that almost looked like arrowheads to slice open the leaves. The damp smell of vegetation would waft out of the plant. It was the most lifelike thing Nickel had ever smelled in the Desolate Plains
The two of them squeezed out moisture from the soft light colored hexagonal holes embedded inside of the leaves into a stone pitcher.
In a matter of a week, Nickel and Farrul got very accustomed to stone. From stone tools to stone huts, stone was everywhere. Stone was the Atlantic Tribe’s way of life. Rough, hard and uneven. It was a substance that looked like frozen molten lava and gave off a thick, almost suffocating metallic scent.
Every day on the West Wing, the sound of shovels and pickaxes hitting the bank of stone in the earth far away filled the air, its ring echoing and reverberating.
The two of them didn’t get much time to become fully acquainted with the people of the tribe, nonetheless the adolescents were the people they interacted with the most. They were instructed not to perform the acht-chi alongside their peers during the windstorms due to their previous exhaustion and the fact that they would become sicker if they tried to. They did not have the same physiological makeup as the rest of the tribespeople which made them so accustomed to the acht-chi. Nickel and Farrul sometimes felt alienated.
They always camped out inside of the nearest hut they could find while everyone else joined in the astral state of the acht-chi, hyperfocused on their movements until they retired to bed and entered dreamstates full of astral visions and the cryptic lyrics of the singing sorceress.
Life was a haze of non-stop work and routine with minimal opportunities to socialize or play. Life was either the sour and damp scent of the fog outside or the sour, musty and metallic scent of the stone huts.
Even though their work and residence with the Atlantic Tribe had continued for only a few days, it was already starting to feel like months of gruelling existence to Nickel. It was work and mutterings amongst each other for socialization, then hiding out in a hut while the rest of the tribe did the acht-chi, becoming distant inaccessible agents of the orange fog which continued to permeate life and the environment.
In the few movements of company in the small huts, Nickel was at odds with the culture around him. He slept every night with the same group of boys he was assigned to do labor with. He still didn’t get along with the three boys, whose names he found out to be Ahmick, Arolé and Chickel. While he didn’t have much time to speak with them, when he did, he was responding to their taunts.
Li, still promising to show Nickel and Farrul harshness, was indifferent to the gang’s behavior. However, it was clear he was fine with them, as he viewed their behavior as a part of the harshness that supposedly kpet activities going and the youngsters disciplined. Too bad for Nickel that Li held quite a bit of authority, especially with the teenage boys.
Nickel badly wanted to speak to Elder Hawk or Steve, the only people who could take the time to speak in depth with Nickel about his circumstance in this tribe’s rigor and non-stop routine.
But Elder Hawk was closed off for the week, meditating in her hut until the end of the week when Nickel and Farrul’s birthing ceremony would occur.
Steve was still sick and he was recuperating inside of one of the infirmary huts where caretakers guarding the sick assured Nickel that he would be able to see and talk to Steve soon.
What he wanted more than to be able to talk to Elder Hawk or Steve was to be able to climb aboard his American Eagle hovercraft. The hovercraft’s hole from the collision of the tribespeople on the night of Nickel, Steve and Farrul’s arrival had been covered with a tarp. It was left where it had crashed and He-Hawk and She-Hawk had instructed that the surrounding area be cleared. A vehicle from the Past World must not be approached any time soon by the people of the hawk.
The switching watchkeepers of the tribe kept a careful eye on the hovercraft, making sure no one approached it. One time, Nickel saw a small boy run toward the hovercraft before being wrestled off the ground by a watchkeeper who ran towards the boy and carried him away as he wailed and wailed until the watchkeeper’s hands covered his mouth.
Nickel was tempted to grab Steve and Farrul and fly away on the hovercraft, resuming their expected journey to Hedonim. He had even discussed it with Farrul at bedtime, but they had always been too exhausted to keep the whispering going long into the night.
Nickel and Farrul had both been promised by He-Hawk and She-Hawk that after the birthing ceremony, a repair, prayer and blessing from Great Father Hawk would ensue for the hovercraft’s safety, setting it off for its journey to Hedonim.
“You guys broke our hovercraft and you think prayers are going to fix it?” Farrul had angrily complained to She-Hawk. Nickel had been thinking the same thing.
“You’ve already been told it was a necessary precaution!” said He-Hawk, causing Nickel and Farrul to sigh in exasperation.
“I sense distrust in both of you. I don’t think it’s that you don’t trust us– the people of my tribe. I think you– don’t- trust our way of the Hawk. You don’t trust our religion.”
“That is- correct,” blurted Farrul, again speaking out loud what Nickel had been thinking.
“I know that the only thing that’s stopping you from leaving is that we give you a place to sleep and regular food to eat that’s better than what you’re used to,” said He-Hawk, eyeing both of them.
Nickel’s heart sank. A sinking feeling welled in Nickel’s chest and he looked down, away from He-Hawk’s eyes. He felt as if his cover had been blown.
“I know you think our religion is crazy nonsense. I can’t blame you. You’re from the Past World.”
“Look around. You’ll see the movement of My Tribe. You’ll see our discipline, our hunt and the feasts that follow. The people of the Hawk have lived like this for generations, starting way before we were born.”
“In the harshest of places, a group of people flourished. All thanks to an idea. Thanks to a religion.”
“Trust……………….. In Great Father Hawk, Past Worlders.”
“Trust in his people.”
“He will not see you or your….. Hovercraft here for long. To him everything happens for a reason. I promise you will leave with more from us than what we have taken away in hurting your vehicle. The hurt will be the smallest compared to what we give you.”
A windstorm took over, forcing Nickel and Farrul to take cover while He-Hawk performed the acht-chi and took over the tribe affairs.
If not for wind storms, the both of them might not have been so accepting of all the things the tribespeople told them. Whenever the fog sticking in the winds quickened, obscuring Nickel and Farrul’s world more than it was already obscured, they were extremely helpless. Unless they wanted to be flattened by the air or spend the next day coughing and retching from polluted lungs, they had to drop everything and follow whoever was around to follow.
Following. It seemed like that was all that Nickel did. He had felt the glimmer of agency when he took Farrul and Steve on his hovercraft and initiated phase hop. Now agency seemed to have disappeared. Although, he often thought to himself in the small pieces of wakefulness before slumber wrapped its tendrils over his mind, about what he had expected. His hovercraft was low on fuel. And he had no idea what lay beyond. This was the Atlantic Plains after all. There was no way the journey to Hedonim would be smooth. Was it even possible to have agency in the Desolate Plains of the Atlantic? Did Elder Hawk have agency? Steve? He-Hawk? She-Hawk? Li? Any of the people in the Atlantic tribe? Everyone here seemed to be under a spell. A very strong spell. Their words felt stilted and filled with ecstasy. It was hard not to see any other way when almost every instruction, thought, story or explanation was followed by an appraisal, prayer or meditation to Great Father Hawk in the likes of “Praise Father Hawk” or “the way of the Hawk lives on.”
The tribespeople looked at him as if he didn’t have agency. He heard older women making tsking sounds during his conversations with them. They would shake their heads and mutter things like, “you poor Past Worlder,” “there’s so much of the Past World in you, so it’s not your fault,” or “may Father Hawk save you.”
When he worked with boys and girls his age on their various chores, Nickel’s confusion and reluctance to embrace the religion of the hawk was seen as a weakness. His confusion, reluctance and suspicions were met with annoyance. People jeered at him to go back to work or just ignored his complaints and questions.
After a while, Nickel gave up trying to control and understand his situation with his peers.
The inquiry and non-adherence that Nickel saw as his strength, distinguishing himself from what he saw as the Atlantic tribes “primitive culture,” was often seen by many of his peers and surrounding adults as one of his greatest weaknesses.
Nickel caught enough flack and derision for it that he settled for quiet submission. Following. He didn’t know if he could take much more of it.
“Just wait until the birthing ceremony,” he would tell himself. “Just– wait.”
“You’ll be back on your hovercraft with two other hopefully badass girls from the tribe to help you get to Hedonim.”
Trying to pinpoint the supposedly bad ass chicks while he had all of his work to do was difficult. The concentration he had usually found for ruminating on the ideas and the questions in his head had grown significantly more fickle.
Waiting. And waiting. For the birthing ceremony.
The night before it was the most restless night he had with the tribe.
He was woken up in the morning an hour earlier than usual by Li, Aziz, Jerome and two other scruffy-haired young men. They all wore red robes decorated in feathers of the same hue. Their robes were long and baggy, enveloping their torsos and legs. Each of them had leather or twine belts fastened at their waists. They all had solemn, but peaceable expressions showing in the torchlight.
“Get up,” whispered Aziz. Everyone else sprawled on the floor beside Nickel was still laying asleep while some snored away. “No time to wait. Get up.”
Fighting his grogginess and feeling of heaviness, Nickel scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could. His heart beat wildly.
The man who had stood still in a circle around him moved towards Farrul, breaking a circle and moving in a straight line, stepping over and around slumbering bodies.
Nickel stood behind them as the slightly shorter of the scruffy-haired boys bent over to nudge Farrul awake with his hand. Farrul grumbled as he awoke. He scowled and pushed the boy’s hands away. Aziz bent down next to the scruffy-haired boy and nudged Farrul as well. Aziz wore a grim expression with wide unforgiving eyes.
He whispered into Farrul’s face. His face melted into mere resentment.
The deathly silence of dozens of slumbering bodies made Aziz’s whisper just barely audible to Nickel.
It had sounded like, “you cannot deny the birthing ceremony.”
Farrul struggled to stand up, but managed. He looked at Nickel with weary red eyes held up by dark bags of skin. The two of them stared at each other with solemn eyes, wearing expressions of dreadful submission. They had submitted to the Atlantic tribe and it seemed too late to do much about it. Their eyes, upon meeting each other, indicated their shared burden. They looked at each other with empathy. They had come a long way since when they had first met and clashed with each other. Farrul had come to accept Nickel as a part of his circumstance. And he had allowed Nickel to join in his circumstance.
Nickel and Farrul now shared circumstances. By staying with Steve and Farrul, Nickel had accepted a shared circumstance. They interacted with a shared goal of escaping the Desolate Plains by first traveling to Hedonim. All the while, they were subject to the circumstances– the limitations of the desolate Plains and its wind storms.
Now, it seemed that they had accepted the Atlantic Tribe into their circumstance. Now, Nickel and Farrul were not only subject to the limitations and circumstances of the desolate Plains, but also to the limitations and circumstances of the Atlantic Tribe.
All these thoughts registered in Nickel’s mind during the period of mere seconds in which his eyes met Farrul’s in shared empathy.
The two of them were patted by the surrounding standing men who brushed them into their instinctive row of walkers, heading for the door.
Nickel realized that in order to get help in the desolate Plains– in order to move towards a better future on the American Mainland, he was going to have to accept new people and places– and in doing so, accept new circumstances and limitations.
Before he could truly ponder on these revelations, Li opened the door. He was immediately bombarded by the scene of the tribe before him.
In the large looming wall behind the rows of huts were lights that were bigger and brighter than any on there before.
Flares of long flames were set up in the gaping holes that dotted the body. The faint echo of drums could be heard emanating from inside the wall.
Inside of some of the windows were tribespeople in brightly colored red, orange, yellow and white feathers dancing in hopping and sweeping motions, bouncing on their toes and swinging their arms and heads from across one side to another. They sometimes disappeared from the view of the window and often reappeared behind another window.
On the jagged tops of the wall was a precarious stone platform. It was long and narrow. Across it, two more dancers somersaulted back and forth between two archers who stood still, looking ahead.
The pounding of the drums grew into a louder, faster beat.
Nickel and Farrul’s escorts paused in the middle of the wide stone walkway, looking at the wide looming wall in the far off distance.
“What happened to keeping watch?” muttered Nickel.
“Our main archers are still there, keeping watch, hidden as usual,” said Jerome, breaking the singularity of the beating drums with his deep throaty voice.
The dancers grew frenetic, somersaulting faster, whipping their torsos and limbs faster; the two dancers on top entwined their arms and moved backwards and forwards, twitching and shaking each other as if they were wrestling.
The beat grew frenetic alongside them, becoming faster and louder. It was thundering, reaching for its crescendo. Lower pitched and faster drumming was suddenly thrown into the mix, patterning in between each larger beat.
The crescendo was reached at a final boneshaking slam, when at the same time, the dancers all reached for the ground in a still silence.
The dancers on the top platform had both let go of each other and bent down on their knees, placing their fists on the surface.
The Archers who were standing still on opposite sides reached for the bows and quivers slung over their back. Once in their hands and once an arrowhead was notched for each, they released.
Arrows were sent outwards, away from the shooters: one straight ahead into the back reaches of the village where Elder Hawk resided and one diagonally over the huts opposite from Nickel.
The arrows disappeared into the East Wing to the left of the square in which Nickel stood. He and the man beside him turned to see the arrows disappear in a gap between two stone plates and the two tall stone posts they rested on, both contraptions that had not been set up the night before.
Nickel and the men beside him craned their necks, looking over and around the empty smelting station that was in front of the posts.
Steam came out from under the plates. The stone posts shuddered. The steam started to come out in billowing swaths. Flames shot out from the opening. The plates clattered as they shook, held to the post by narrow pieces that looked like twine.
The hiss of the steam was replaced by a billowing sound as fire roared out on top of the plates, shooting upwards in tall flames.
“Woah,” whispered Nickel.
A half gasp- half grunt was emitted, seemingly from Farrul.
“To the fire,” said Aziz and the group of individuals started towards the posts.
G.R. Nanda 