Chapter 2 - Barbarian
Some folk of my Time have invented gods who desire to cast humanity out of our paradise. Even here in my own world of the wildwood, there are now others, who are not of my own savage folk. Two more kinds of people will feature within my tale. Two stages of degeneracy. First, allow me to introduce these others who have reached my own world. Please meet the Barbarians.
Camp of Oma, Leva soils. SE Britain.
A small circle scratched roughly into sandy soils by children who play here. Circles are important to the foreign invaders, who we now meet. They use circles to delineate sacred from the mortal. Straight lines these strangers additionally make. These lines, they are fond of carving across the belly of Nature. Their straight lines stretch back in time to far away, distant ancestors whom they revere as gods, and forward in time to mark the progress of their degeneracy.
A frail girl not quite of maiden age, stands at the centre of this children' s circle of play. Obediently, Amaia keeps her eyes closed for the game. Her sharp ears pick up on the tell-tale scampering away of younger playmates. Much as Amaia dresses in skins and fabrics not dissimilar to those which we wild savages wear, she isn't one of us. Her long dark hair is straighter and finer than our coarse waves. It's tinged with a shade of brown. Amaia’s honey-coloured skin tone is lighter in pigment. Quite bright to our own eyes. Her facial features are more rounded and infantile. The animal hides she dons weren't taken as gifts of Nature, but from tamed beasts her people keep as captive. This girl’s fabrics were spun using a spindle, and their fibres are from foreign plants her people sow into the ground.
Ur'salla and I are indigenous savages. Amaia and her kin belong to a new culture. Rather than belong to Nature, these folk seek to remake it. Whereas we only take from Nature what we need. These new people take from it anything they want. They gladly strip the wilds of all they desire, with no respect shown to its spirits. They’ve brought with them their agriculture, and along with that economy, they introduce their new concept of labour to our world. If I and Ur’salla may be described as savages, then Amaia’s kind may be regarded as barbarians.
Some savages proclaim these new stone age neighbours to be the children of the wood ant. For their fecundity is incredible. Barbarians raise many children, and they consume the wilds beyond any limitation of natural resources. Even though our rainforests are resistant to damage, these neolithic newcomers use their labour to vandalise them. They open up our wild forests and modify them into woodland pastures, where they graze their servile beasts. Around their river valley camps, these farmers scatter the alien seeds of grain rich grasses into the ashes of our wildwoods. Perhaps this vandalism is mild compared to the total devastation of later ages. Yet it's the beginning of degeneracy.
Young Amaia knows her own folk of Oma, to be a pioneer commune of the Leva. Those who follow the ancestral Trinity of the East. For these believers have elevated the spirits of their agriculture over and above all of those in Nature. These ancestors have personified into gods. The Leva bring with them not only agriculture and labour. They bring with them religion. This is the belief system of Amaia. Now, she opens up her brown eyes, and uses them to scan the open countryside of Oma. Where could her younger playmates be hiding?
Amaia considers, could the little ones have run off into the wild woods beyond our clearance? She answers this question aloud, ‘No, surely they wouldn't dare to hide in the dark forest. The lair of wolf, bear, and of savages’.
Amaia’s people do enter the woods, in order to rob it of all natural resources. She reasons the children would be reluctant to venture, absent the reassuring presence of an adult. Few grown ups desire spending time out of their camp. Except for crazy Brazille. The eccentric and dreamy father of little Xagu. Amaia has even overheard other adults of Oma, castigating Brazille for wasting time in the wilds.
They tell him, ‘Brazille, you should be labouring with us. Attending the cattle, or helping with the harvest’. Poor Brazille, for a barbarian, he makes such a rotten farmer.
The Leva can be almost as egalitarian as savages, but their democracy is less perfect. Not all barbarians enjoy equal status. Those of recent descent from wildborns may be regarded as low caste. Neither do barbarian women enjoy equality within Leva society. Although the barbarians have yet to invent slavery, the Leva invite female savages into their camps, as subsidiary wives. Often this invitation into their utopia is forced, and it's these captive wildborn concubines who have to endure the lowest status.
Amaia wonders if the children could be hiding in the ruined campsite of savages, on the edges of the clearance,
Perhaps they all ran to hide in the old orphan camp?’ By orphan, she refers to the broken and tamed savages who once dwelled in the makeshift dens there. This possibility she dismisses, ‘No, I think not. That place is haunted by wild ghosts, the children wouldn't dare to hide there’.
Amaia searches for clues in the disturbed dust outside of her circle. A mess of footprints and hoof marks. She discerns a fresh trail of small feet which lead from the circle towards the scattered huts of Oma’s farmsteads. Amaia smiles at her own cleverness, then skips out of the circle to follow these shimmers. The game is on.
Part way towards the camp, Amaia spots a disturbance in the dust, by a small gap opened between two hazel hurdles. These hurdles along with many others, form the fence-line of an enclosure, but this parting, Amaia recognises as being new. Consequently she squeezes herself through, and falls onto hands and knees to stare between the many bovine legs of the commune’s herd present within. Beyond the dun coloured longhorns, she spies a pair of naughty, little boys who hide at a hazardous proximity to the beasts. Their eyes meet with hers, and they chuckle aloud. Amaia beckons for them to circumnavigate the cattle with care,
‘That way, around there, don’t cause them to stampede’. When they join her, she scolds them for their recklessness, ‘ Boys, this isn't a safe place for you to hide!’
Together, they take turns to squeeze out of the gap, and onto the trail. The boys help Amaia to close up the fencing, ‘Back to the circle you go.’ she grins at them, and they totter back up the track. Amaia turns to face Oma’s camp, resuming her skip towards the hovels of barbarians.
The farmers camp a spot for a few years, before their agriculture leeches all life from the soils, then they move further along the valley. They construct shelters barely more ambitious than our own, but employ building materials alien to savages. We prefer to use natural materials, such as reeds, pine sprays, deadwood, and brush from the forest to build our dens. The barbarians build theirs using stacked turf, dried mud and dung, and above them raise roofs of more turf, or of straw from their crops. These damp, squalid appearing farm huts, disperse loosely across a man-made clearance, overlooking the salt marshes of a wide open sea estuary.
Skipping between these clay huts of neolithic settlers, Amaia can peek inside each one. She ducks beneath timber mantels that they carry between campsites. Each of these is reverently carved with spirals and other magical symbols of their faith. Past more darkened doorways of hovels, Amaia skips and dances in her hunt for playmates. She passes by a grey mother of Oma. The woman rubs two heavy quern stones to crack open the fat seeds of Leva grain. Bent over on her knees, this mother of Oma has aged unnaturally. Both work and child-bearing are excessive in this society. Together, they act to reduce the lifespan of these people. Agriculture is both their success, and their curse. For they are unable to escape it. We free savages have no wish to emulate their progression.
The sad woman glances up from her repetitive task, to see Amaia skipping around with joy. The girl dances up to each doorway of each hovel, and peers inside for the little ones. Each time Amaia locates another child, she exclaims,
‘Got you little rascals! Now back to the circle you return’.
Again she passes by the kneeling woman, who this time pauses from her gruelling labour to scowl. Through teeth visibly chipped and damaged by the grit of her own quern stones, the mother spits out with disgust,
‘Amaia, you should be helping the commune with the harvest in the gardens. Not running around like an ignorant savage. Soon you’ll be wed, and you should cease your child’s play!’
With deaf ears turned onto her critic, Amaia simply continues in her games. Before long she’s found all but one playmate. Xagu, the small daughter of crazy Brazille, remains to be returned to the circle, and only one more hut remains to be searched. Amaia skips up the pathway leading to the house of an elderman named Paaxti. She expects him to be busy with the harvest, or otherwise vandalising the woods, but his young wife named Gorka will be at home. Maybe Xagu hides with her?
Halfway to this last farmhouse, a female scream resonated out. Amaia freezes still on the path. More screams, she recognises to be those of Gorka. Sounds of female distress, followed by slapping. Then a cold silence. Amaia knows there is wrongdoing ahead of her within the hut. A male figure suddenly appears at the dark doorway. He is the eldest son of Paaxti, who is the same age as his new step mother named Gorka. His name is Torixe, and Amaia knows him to be trouble. Torixe adjusts his breeches, and when he sees Amaia frozen on the pathway ahead, he gives her an uncomfortable smirk. Torixe stops adjusting his calfskin beeches, lifts his loincloth aside, then touches himself down there.
Amaia glances away, kisses her frog’s skull pendant, and whispers her prayer, ‘Athiratu, Athiratu, Frog Mother. There is evil here. Extend to me your protection, let no harm befall me, for Amaia will be your servant in Oma’. This prayer has been taught by a favourite aunt.
Amaia backs away. The hovel ahead isn't a safe place for her. Xagu wouldn't be hiding there. Torixe sees Amaia’s retreat, and laughs out loudly at her fear of him. She turns, and runs back to the main camp,
If Xagu isn't hiding in the houses, then where could she be hiding? ‘Xagu, where are you little Vole?’
Her eyes fall upon the fresh footprints of one small child, stamped into the dirt of a trail. This leads her away from the clay huts and to the gardens, where her kin grow their crops of seed-grasses, legumes, and roots. Xagu’s tell-tale footprints lead up to another row of hurdles. This fence has been erected to keep beasts out.
Many are busy labouring here. Uncles and aunts work alongside each other in tidy rows, beneath the warmth of a high sun. The men even remove their leather hats to work naked, whilst their wives wear nought but long skirts of cowhide, with nothing above the waist. The men work in their row in front. Synchronised they all wave sharp flakes of flintstone embedded into sickles of wood.
Together the fathers of Oma sing a song as they slash at a monoculture of tall, foreign grasses, ‘Praise to Father Daghnu, who grants to us this wheat’.
Behind them, a row of long skirted women, gather together the cropped seedheads. They contribute the next line of the song, ‘Whilst Shaah, Mother of the Sun, ripens it for us to eat’.
A man, dressed in a costume of straw, dances around in circles, waving corn dollies in his hands. This is a fellow named Mazde, the local part-time priest of Daghnu, who serves Oma as its strawman.
Amaia spots her own mother among the long skirted women who gather the produce. She doesn’t wish to embarrass her, nor to be scolded for not helping with the collective work. Therefore Amaia slyly tiptoes past the harvest gang, and follows Xagu’s tracks towards where the last patch of einkorn stands. She follows Xagu’s footprints until they disappear among the tall grasses. Fearful of causing any damage to the crop, she squeezes into the parted gap with care not to crush any of the tall, golden, fat headed grasses. A narrow corridor has most recently been opened up ahead, and in between the stalks, Amaia can see etched into the dirt below, the footprints of a small child.
Xagu’s silly giggles erupt even before Amaia can see her squatting in tall einkorn. Her hiding place is revealed. At last, Amaia has collected all of her little playmates and has won the game.
Playfully, she grabs at Xagu’s small shoulders, and triumphantly exclaims, ‘Ha ha, got you clever little Vole, and I win!’
The small girl’s own giggles are interrupted by a coughing fit. A sudden, rattling cough. Amaia feels great concern this cough may not be caused by pollen, or by harvest dust. For she knows grim spirits have followed her barbarian folk across the seas, and they haunt the crowded abodes in this new world. These evil spirits include that trickster named Raspu. He, who first steals away the laughter of children, and then takes away their breath.