A Drum Beat Forever: Cooking Pot

Adding something to the stew...

What happens after an abduction? A brief diversion into fiction, a second part in the experimental serialization of a larger project. Read part 1 here if you missed it!

Enjoy!

2: Cooking Pot

Kemen’s earliest memory was being left alone at the longhouse with Aunty Budic. In a fog of uncertainty he knew Mother was with the midwife, across the stead, another world. Although he did not know when she would return, he knew when she did, he would become a big brother. Mother's face had been flushed as Uncle Arronian had taken her arm to help her walk. She had been telling him for several moons that the baby was coming, but still the air had seemed to vanish from the room until they departed. It felt distant now as Kemen's mind was more occupied by gut pangs of anticipation for Aunty Budic's next barked order.

The longhouse was where Uncle Arronian, Aunty Budic, and their four children all lived, although Kemen and Mother spent much of their days working there before returning by dusky alley to their own small round-house. Splinters stood like arm hair on its plank walls steeped with the comforting smells of fresh thatch from above and decades of burning wood and unwashed bodies held within. Dark even near the sun’s height, it was lit by an open door and a pair of square windows that summoned twin beams of light alive with the gray swirl of fire ash as they illuminated the many clay pots and animal hides lining the room's edge.

Aunty Budic busied herself cutting cow meat with a flint knife on a bench beside the raised central earthen firebed. On the fire's edge Aunty Budic had placed a clay cooking pot whose lower half was ink black with soot and whose top bore a pair of spiraling eyes with smooth dimples at their core glinting with captured sunlight by some sorcerous kiln glaze. Kemen remembered admiring this pot once before, but had forgotten its beauty. To him it was something split between the worlds: the clay shaped by a man, the blackened bottom tarnished by the fires of women, but eyes that sparkled with the light of the otherworld.

Aunty Budic looked up from the ruby red flesh she sawed with a seashell shaped blade, her sharp eyes always caught him like a bird's beak spotting a grub. That morning she had already put him to work sorting kindling and hauling nightsoil pots and inedible roots to the putrid waste heap behind the longhouse.

“Take up that and give the floor a cleaning,” she said, gesturing to a straw broom nearly twice his height.

It was a familiar task and the earthen floor, packed by two generations of feet, gave up little loose dirt to Kemen’s clumsy sweeping as he harvested the bounty of dead grass and hair which reappeared each day like morning dew. Long blonde hairs mostly, although a few of his and Mother's dark hairs were intermingled in the spindly mess. He brushed them into a pile before shuffling them onward with the dry rustling taps of his broom to the front door frame. With an overly dramatic swing of his broom he struck the sweepings beyond the doorstep.

The loud brightness of the outside world hit Kemen like a thunderclap. Sunlight soaked into tall emerald grass ringing both round and longhouses, broken by footworn pathways from doorsteps to the main thoroughfare where a shirtless old shepherd led a pair of baaing gray sheep. The cool spring breeze carried the distant thud of wood being broken for fires, somewhere a man calling to another, and a peel of laughter from the girls across the way as they whipped freshly washed cheesecloths into the open air.

Downhill there stood three other longhouses of the other great families, a smoking shed, and clustered roundhouses butting up against a low stone wall beyond which was a horizon of grassy fields darkened by islands of shady oaks and drifting clouds of sheep and cattle under the watchful eye of men and horses made no larger than ants at this distance. Distant blue hued mountains guarded the edges of Kemen's world.

Kemen lingered in the door frame to watch the shepherd. The man’s tan skin was speckled with pinprick-like reddish dots, and seemed to hang as if it was too large for him. The dots did not seem painful or the product of illness, but what caused them Kemen could only wonder at. Noticing Kemen’s stare, the old man gave him a warm grin too wide for his few remaining teeth to fill. Kemen waved enthusiastically back at the man and called out to him to have a blessed day. He silently watched the shepherd lead the sheep until he vanished over the hill on his way towards the finger rocks at the stead's center.

Kemen returned to the wood smoked warmth of the longhouse and stood watching Aunty Budic work the blade in a rocking motion, the cow meat making the occasional snapping sound as some hidden sinew was cut. Eventually he worked up the will to tell her he was finished.

"Sit and be quiet then."

He nodded and sat cross-legged beside the fire. The pot’s swirling eyes looked directly into him as it gurgled from within. Already the green smell of vegetables inside had begun perfuming the room. Soon after, Aunty Budic unceremoniously dumped the cow meat inside. She put the lid on and paused to look at the boy. "I'll be right back. Just stay here."

Kemen forced his eyes to meet hers and nodded, trying to hide the growing pull his eyes felt towards the pot lest she know his mind. She hesitated anyway, watching him for a moment. Kemen liked the stoney elegance of her face, which was complimented by the roundness of her circular gold earrings. The patterns of those earrings were still a mystery to him, small inscribings he had never had the courage to ask to see.

“Don't touch the pot or knives, okay?”

Kemen nodded again and the sound of her swishing skirts faded into one of the backrooms. As she vanished behind a curtain Kemen released a long held breath.

Absently pulling at the ties of his woolen leg-wraps, Kemen wondered where everyone went. Usually at least one of his cousins was home. He reasoned that having a baby must require many hands, and it had drawn them away much like a grain harvest — mother had been warning him since winter that babies were a lot of work. Kemen pondered the absences of his cousins while staring into the gurgling pot's eyes.

Perhaps he could touch that eye, for only a moment, and feel its grooves before she returned. The glaze glistened wet with orange firelight as Kemen licked his lips. He eyed the curtain to Aunty Budic's room.

Kemen rose with hunter's grace and stalked towards it. The gurgling of the stew filled his ears and hot steam clung to his face, heavy with the iron of cow’s blood. His finger sought the glazed surface of the eye, feeling its smoothness for a glorious breath of time until pain blew through him.

He held his finger and screamed. The finger looked normal, slightly reddened, but throbbing agony filled it to the knuckle and stabbed into his shaking palm. Hot tears flooded his eyes as did a spinning confusion why this had happened.

Something thudded in the backroom and Aunty Budic bounded out from behind the curtain to his side. "What happened?"

Kemen could only shake his head and hold his small red finger up to her, his mouth wide in a graceless sob.

"Your finger?" her eyes widened at the pot, "you little idiot, what did you do?"

He closed his eyes against her, the words little idiot echoing, a screaming steam trapped in his head.

Through closed eyes he could sense her larger body kneeling as softer words pouring out in an indistinguishable stream beneath his own full throated wailing. Kemen's throat ached from screaming, and waves of pain whipped from his index finger to the base of his palm with every heartbeat.

The thunder of a man's voice from the doorway broke the spell. "Budic, what the hell did you do?"

Uncle Arronian stormed in and Kemen felt gigantic hands sweep under his armpits before he weightlessly flew onto the man's shoulder. A hand rested across the breadth of Kemen’s back as the booming yells from Uncle Arronian’s chest vibrated Kemen's body. The adults traded a few short barks before Kemen found himself bouncing away on Uncle Arronian’s shoulder, ducking through the door and into the bright spring air once more.

His eyes dried faster in the cool air and Uncle Arronian put him down by a stone rain collector that dogs drank from so that he could rest his burnt fingertip in it. The cool water lapped away the pain as Kemen took steadying breaths.

"I'm sorry," said Kemen.

"Don't be."

Man and boy were quiet for a moment, content to let the sounds of work and passers-by fill the air for them. Eventually Uncle Arronian knelt beside Kemen.

"Do you want to see your baby sister now?"

He shook his head.

"Take a moment then, but you need to see her. Sometimes the best we can do is meet challenges with courage even if we don't feel we can. Especially if we don't feel we can."

They walked past the finger stones, under the wooden blessing arch, and into a cluster of roundhouses on the far side of the hill. Uncle Arronian rapped on the doorframe with two knuckles and after a muffled call from within ushered Kemen inside.

The dark air was thick with the smell of wet earth, not unlike the steaming pot. Mother sat propped up on furs with a wool blanket covering her raised knees even though she looked like she had been sweating. Raven hair flowed over bare shoulders as her face lit up at his arrival.

"Sweet boy, come closer."

Kemen looked back, Uncle Arronian remained outside and was gently closing the door. The midwife barely glanced up as she busied herself with a bowl of something in the corner.

Kemen took a few tentative steps closer and peered over Mother's knees. The baby was there; impossibly small hands grappled at mother's breast only to pause and resume slumbering. Unlike he and mother, its hair was the color of wet sand and its tiny purple-pink body reminded Kemen more of a hairless rodent than a person. He wanted to hold it but knew Mother would say no.

Kemen looked at Mother, she was chuckling behind her hand.

"Forgive me sweet boy, but your face…"

"I'm a big brother now?"

"Yes."

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