The Dust Finders is my latest completed project, and I intend to make it a Kindle and/or Nook Document for sale at various places (i hope). I hope also to make a Lulu purchase available. So far, this is a sampling of its third edited draft. When my artist gets back to me with a final draft of the cover, I will present that here. If you are not familiar with him, his name is James McDonald, and he has been absolutely wonderful to me so far. I'm so thrilled right now.
THE DUST FINDERS
A few small children aren’t stopped in time, and so they grow in the tribe with only one hand. When someone isn’t watching the children around the ek’luka, the ek’luka will take whatever the child offers and the hand that offers it. [AT1] So when these “onesides” grow to the age of marrying, they are paired with other onesides so they will work together.
It is of no worth to blame the ek’luka for their deeds. It wastes time and sweat, which are valuable here in this desolate land. Killing an ek’luka for the deed merely deprives the entire tribe for the cost ofonly the child’s hand and to do this is theft from the tribe: a crime against the gods. [AT2]
The beak of the ek’luka is made for pecking at rocks, for stabbing into the needle trees to get the grubs that live there, for breaking open the rocks that hold the slabeens inside them. It is not for being graciousthe kind child who makes the mistake of trying to feed them. When the ek’luka bites, it bites everything;the beak cut through bone and flesh without stopping at all. My son’s hand was gone with a ‘clacking’ sound before I could scream his name. The great snaky throat of the ek’luka sucked his tiny hand away into the creature’s unconquerable guts. So fast.
The world moves so fast.
So, Allowa is a oneside, like a few others among the people. The ek’luka who did it has had offspring since that time. It follows in the wake of our tribe with the rest of them. We have eaten its brother and made strings from its guts and used its bones. We’ve made water bags from its bladder, and we drank the juices of all four of his eyes.
We wait to eat the one that ate Allowa’s hand. People tell me it is best to wait. My wife says this also. I asked them why, but they all confirm it is best to wait when a oneside is made. If I wanted, I could tell them to kill that ek’luka, to eat it and use it right alongside its brother. I am an elder, and he is my son, and I do want revenge for the death of my son’s wholeness, but my wife told me, as she tells me again, that we cannot change he is a oneside now and we have killed and eaten the ek’lukas we need, and it is better to wait. I know why. I don’t need to be told these things. But my blood runs hot. I want to spill that creature’s blood and let it be hot on the broken stones of the wasteland.
We all sleep together in one tent: my wife, my child, and I. At night, when all the chores have been done, there is peace; and my wife snoring and burning hot next to me only irritates me a little. I would rather have that than lonely cold. I would rather have my oneside child than no child.
It is difficult to say which bag of my possessions I will open tomorrow. I forget where I put things. Maybe I don’t need anything. I think of these things and I fall asleep. The k’toogs grunt outside. They shake the ground when they go to sleep.
Sometimes, in these wastelands, we find things.
A few weeks ago, we found the head of an ax, only the head. Perfect and sharp. The handle was gone, but this ax head was perfect. It is said these wastelands, which stretch for hundreds of miles, were once a great forest. Perhaps this ax head was used to cut down trees here, back when trees were plentiful. It is a treasure of the tribe. My cousin found it, but he could not keep it; the elders insisted he give it to them to decide its fate.. We will sell it when we find a village, or when we find a big town, or when we establish one of these things. These are dreams. We have walked these lands for decades, for generations and we only visit the villages and the big towns. We find the tracks of our grandfathers out here in the wastelands.
Most of the time, we find the cursed people. They have forgotten how to be human beings, like us. The sha’oo, the demon-born, who never die, and who offer nothing but death to any who find them. No one can trade with them. They will only take. They are attracted to the sounds of the groaning k’toogs, the crunching of wagons, the ek’lukas squawking.
The ek’luka cannot eat the sha’oo, but they will bite them, and they will claw at them. The next morning, we see the ek’luka who’ve attacked the sha’oo only for a little while, and then they are gone forever.
The k’toogs groan and jump when the sha’oo come.
It is not my turn to be on watch. When is my turn? I think it is after ten more walks and ten more sleeps. I think Gendjee is on watch tonight. He is much older than me. And he is a oneside. He is not an elder. Will my child be an elder? Some of the elders are onesides. It is possible.
I cannot remember what my child tried to feed that ek’luka. Somehow, this becomes important.
To make ek’luka follow our caravan, we have to leave things behind. We have to throw away. If we used everything, if we never made garbage for them, the ek’luka would not follow us. If they did not follow us, we could not kill and eat them, and we could not use their flesh to make leather, or their guts for string, or their tendons for ropes or their claws to give us honor or to grind up into glue. Their beaks we could not use for weapons or for cutting or for sale in the villages to be ground into powders.
We stop sometimes and eat the things we find, the things we take from this land, and we make garbage for the ek’luka. We travel close to clumps of needletrees so they will peck at them. It is an act of worship to toss away food we could eat, a sacrifice over which the greedy ek’luka fight.
And only once every ten walks do we turn on them and take back from them.
I cannot remember what Allowa was feeding that one. What did he want to see if it would eat? A piece of leather? A bone? His hand? He picked one day out of all days, one day out of that year, to suddenly forget the ways of our people. What goes through a child’s mind is something no one knows, not even the child. I was a child once, and how I was not a oneside, I cannot say. My mistakes were not so costly, I guess.
I will have to teach him again how to write.
He will never shoot a bow. He will hold the reins of a k’toog with one hand. When he marries, he will handle first one breast, then the other.
These are strange thoughts. I cannot sleep because I cannot remember what it was. In the morning I will ask my wife, Has’sada, what my son wanted to see the ek’luka eat.
If she remembers, she’ll tell me.
She tells me it was a root.
We are moving again. We head north, because summer is arriving in the south, and it is cooler north. In the summer, it is too hot in the wastelands.
My cousin, the one who found the ax head, who is called Petoo, says we will find a village soon, and there we will be able to sell the ax head. The villages are like wild animals sometimes. They come and they go and you don’t know which kind you will find.
Petoo has grown more confident since he found the ax head. He thinks he can smell oases. Thankfully, he is not an elder, so we do not have to follow these wild whims of his. I must confess, however, that Petoo has a luck for finding things. Many of the elders think there is magic in the ax head he found, which is why it was not ruined. Not many years ago, Petoo found a book. We do not know who wrote it. It was not our language. But it was a good trade. We traded it with a white-skin from the west and we got gold and silver. Gold and silver are worth anything.
My son is up on our k’toog. His hand clutches the creature’s neck. His other arm has never entirely healed. He tries to balance with his stump, and it hurts him.
In the river bed we find gek’liki, the fat worms that glue dirt all over themselves. The grit keeps them from being eaten by most things, except by birds and by ek’luka. The ek’luka eat the dirt with them, when they find them. It is difficult to get the gek’liki, because the ek’luka like them so much. We have to fight them away, threaten to kill them, or throw rocks at them, and they scramble off away from us. The wives shout and waggle their tongues at them. It is best for frightening husbands, but it will do against the ek’luka for now.
The gek’liki are good for us. They have water in them, which we will squeeze from them tonight. Their carcasses keep the ek’luka with us, if we do not make them into sleeves or stockings.
I throw one of the worms to the ek’luka that has my son’s hand, and it eats it quickly, like it eats everything. It does not even hold it. Instead, it bites off the middle of it, then snatches up the ends. It is not grateful.
We find ten worms. We do not find water here. We do not find much of anything else. I don’t think we know where we are going.
The chief elder, Makowa, says we are going where we always go, to some of the cities in the north, near the land called Morrigar, near some of the white skins.
Allowa goes to my brother’s tent tonight. Has’sada and I make love. Children are wisdom in the tribe, and one becomes a high elder with more children. But that is not why we make love. Sometimes, it is because we are married. Love is not mentioned. We know that word among the people, but it is a word people give away like lagniappe with trade. We regard it like food. It is something to be digested, something tangible, something not talked about, like the food already in one’s stomach.
I do not like our path, and I think about this while my wife is under me. We have walked for days and days, and we have camped, and we always go north in the summer, but I fear we are going somehow wrong. I an not a high elder like Makowa[AT3] , so I do not know for certain.
We breathe. Perhaps, in a year, there will be a child. But that is not why we make love. It is food in our stomachs. I tell myself I am feeling strange for no reason. It is because my child is a oneside.
Sha’oo. We encounter one. Again, Petoo finds it. Always out in front, with the other scouts, ahead of the tribe, the one who finds the path for us, who considers how best the caravan can go this year.
He comes back to us excited. He says this one talks. It is rare, but some sha’oo talk. They are fleshy demons.
When they talk, it is best not to listen.
Makowa asks how many, and Petoo tells him only one. He is disappointed in only one. I am relieved. I consider my son. A talking sha’oo possesses people. They have a madness that is contagious. Petoo has no children.
Makowa chooses me to go with Petoo and others of the tribe. He cannot go, because he is the chief elder. He must send. So I go. The ek’luka scuttle around behind the caravan and squawk. They know something is happening. Someone throws them a bit of food to keep them behind the caravan.
Petoo talks in my ear about the sha’oo he has found. He tells me it is a frightful one. He wants me to shudder. I have a shield made from the skin of an ek’luka, painted with my colors: green and yellow and red. I carry a spear. Petoo also has a spear, but he has a bow too. I ask him why he didn’t shoot the sha’oo with an arrow and be done with it. He is a scout, he says, and he will report to the tribe as he is supposed to do.
He wants entertainment. Scouts do not have to report everything to the tribe. I didn’t always.
We top a ridge and there is the sha’oo. It stands in the middle of a dry, cracked land at the bottom of the ridge. This place must have been a lake, but I do not recognize it. Where have we wandered this time? We are far off-track if I do not recognize a dead lake. I do not mention this in front of the others, for fear of alarming them.
It is good my cousin Petoo is a scout. It will go well for my family if he succeeds. I will bring him to my tent tonight and ask him where he is leading us.
The sha’oo is on its hands and knees and digging. Did it notice Petoo? I think it did not. We go toward it now, brandishing our weapons. Perhaps we will frighten it. I want to kill it and be done with it.
It is pulling up the little caked dirt and tossing the pieces aside. It is saying something about water. It wants water. This is not madness.
It is a woman here. She is not a sha’oo, I point out to the others. We have no need of weapons for her. The others do not convince easy. They think Petoo was right.
We discuss.
Are there not ways to know the sha’oo, we each suggest to another. We do not know for certain.
The woman does not believe in us. She looks at us. Sometimes she stands and looks at us. But she does not believe in us. She is mad. I will take her some water.
The others are not certain. The others feel the least should do it. The least among us is Ka’aman, who is no relation to me. It is tempting to demand he go with the water. He told me once if I had a daughter, he would marry her. I do not know what this means, but I do not do what I am tempted to do.
I take my small bag of water and I walk towards the woman. I have given Petoo my shield and he walks with me. If the woman is foolish, he will step in front of me. I keep my spear in my hand.
The woman is not foolish.
She asks me my name and I tell her I am Gel’el and the man with me is Petoo. She does not know how to open a bottle or drink from it. She claws at it like an ek’luka at the ground. She bites it. I do not offer her any help.
I tell Petoo she looks like a Hekeema. She wears their jewelry. She has a broad forehead, and her hair is only allowed to grow toward the back of her head. Her eyes are shaped like almonds.
Petoo insists she is a sha’oo because she does not know her name or how to open and drink from a bottle of water. She uses her demonic charms to let us think she is not a sha’oo.
Her face has been scorched, or she would have been beautiful. She is strange to me. My wife, when she travels, wears her hair like a veil. It is grown long and made to hang over her face, to shield her beauty from the sun. This woman’s head looks almost naked compared to my wife’s. This woman’s lips are parched like two peppers. Her fingers are raw. Her nails are broken off on three of the fingers of her left hand.
My son lost his right hand, the honorable hand. That is perhaps why I look at her left hand.
She is licking droplets leaking from the bottle. I stab at her left arm with my knife and I see red blood there. If she is a sha’oo, would she bleed like this?
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