Kana

by Alex Lubertozzi

I

Kana winced at the scene before him and turned away. Lalo, cradling Gonwa on the dirt floor of their hut, was tching and cooing at her baby as she sliced small crosses into his cheeks with the jagged edge of an oyster shell. Gonwa’s crying had woken them several times during the night, the second night in a row. The cuts only made him cry more, of course. And when the tears ran down his cheeks, the salt burned his fresh wounds, prompting even louder, more urgent cries. But the pain would teach the child not to cry again.

The scars on Kana’s cheeks tingled as he crouched by the hut’s opening and stared out at the mountains beyond their camp. Silhouetted against the predawn sky, the distant hills rose from the valley like an enclosing wall.

He turned back to see Lalo comforting Gonwa, the infant’s chubby arms flailing away, his face streaked with blood and tears. Lalo would have to clean and feed Gonwa soon. When Kana looked at Gonwa’s high forehead, broad nose, and displeased expression, he saw the face of Mokoa, the boy’s father. Mokoa had died from a snakebite after he’d gotten Lalo pregnant. Kana, who had lusted after Lalo since before he was grown, was suddenly in a position to pursue her. Lalo gladly welcomed Kana’s affections. But Kana soon discovered that in love, as in hunting, acquiring what you pursued was a fleeting sort of thrill. And he was reminded of the fact that a baby demanded most of a mother’s attention, whether you were the mother’s elder child or her mate.

It was hard for Kana not to be reminded of his mother when Lalo fussed over Gonwa, and the two of them together tended to echo one another, particularly when scolding poor Gonwa. A young man yet to fill out his tall frame and with only patches of fuzz on his chin and upper lip, Kana was getting a sobering preview of the rest of his life.

“I’m going out to hunt,” he said.

“That’s good,” she said. “Bring back some meat.” Since giving birth to Gonwa, Lalo had craved meat, the fattier the better.

Kana bent down to kiss her on the cheek and touch Gonwa’s trembling head, then smiled and ducked out, the child’s shrieks ringing in his ears.

He stepped out into the halflight and breathed in the cool morning air. Gathering up his bow and arrows, he bid good morning to Ngolo, who was minding a pack of rambunctious youngsters whose parents were making good use of this rare interlude. The group elder, Ngolo had flecks of gray in his beard and close-cropped hair receding from his forehead. He was fletching an old arrow with new feathers and humming to himself.

“Don’t you sleep?” Kana asked. They were the only other ones out so early.

“I sleep,” he nodded, “just not through sunrise … nor Gonwa’s wailing.”

Kana laughed. “I’m feeling hungry,” he said, resting one end of his bow on the ground like a staff.

Ngolo nodded. “Why don’t you wait for your cousin, Mahlu?”

Mahlu was a poor hunter, but Kana had the grace to turn his head before rolling his eyes at Ngolo’s suggestion. “I’d rather hunt alone today,” he said. “I’ll hunt with Mahlu next time.”

Ngolo shrugged as Kana got up, made his farewell, and stalked off.

“Good hunting,” Ngolo called after him before he disappeared into the bush.

* * *

With the sun casting long shadows across the savanna, Kana spotted a honeyguide perched on one of the branches of a white-thorn and whistled through his teeth to let it know he was there. The honeyguide called back and fluttered its wings. Kana made a low hum in response, and the little bird took off as Kana followed on foot.

The bird flew far from its original perch, circling back several times to allow Kana to catch up.

“Tirr-tirr-tirr,” it called.

By the time the honeyguide landed on a desiccated, gnarled old tree, the sun was high in the sky and Kana’s mouth was watering thinking about the savory flesh of the honeycomb. He gathered a bundle of brush and hacked a gash in the hollow tree trunk with his stone ax, exposing the hive. Lighting the brush with his flint, he smoked the bees from the tree and drew out the combs dripping with honey. He devoured the golden liquid and most of the combs—the sour-salty larvae within and the sweet honey made for a delicious, rich treat. Giving thanks to the bird, he left a few scraps of the comb along with some of the honey.

Sated and with the bees beginning to recover from their stupor, Kana retreated to the shade of a copse of trees next to a steep tor. Licking his fingers and looking out over the valley and the mountains beyond, he imagined what might lie on the other side.

After building a fire to keep away predators—his ax, bow, arrows, and leather pouch in a neat pile beside him—Kana lay down, intending to nap through the heat of midday before going out to hunt.

When he awoke, it was dusk. His mind in a haze, Kana was confused about what time of day, or even what day, it was. He hadn’t intended to sleep that long, but he had gotten precious little rest the night before. Lalo would be annoyed with him for being late, her craving for meat unfulfilled.

Kana wondered idly what would happen if he didn’t go back to camp that evening. There were no explicit rules within Kana’s group, though there were many customs. And it was not the custom of his people to venture outside their lands. But it was not a rule.

He got up, found some water to drink, moved his bowels, gathered his bow and arrows, secured his hatchet in a leather belt, and slung his pouch over his shoulder before looking out across the valley and the blue-green mountains beyond, now mostly in shadow.

No one had ever roamed beyond the mountains to the north or the big salt lake to the south. Their lands were seven or eight days’ walk from one end to the other, and there were other groups that shared the land. Sometimes Kana’s people traded with them. Sometimes one of them went to live with another group, as Kana’s aunt had. Sometimes one came to live with them. But they were the same sort of people. What sort of people lived on the other side of the mountains? What kind of lands lay there? Why not find out? And, surprising himself with the decision, Kana set out.

It wasn’t as if Lalo would go hungry, he reasoned. He, on the other hand, would have to fend for himself. While it was still light, he shot a bushbaby out of a tree and made camp in the foothills along the frontier. He skinned and roasted it over an open fire and consumed every last bit. He was particularly fond of the brain, boiled in its little skull, and the tough, chewy footpads. The hide, drying on a branch, he would wrap around his bow for a handhold and to keep the bow from cracking.

It being rainy season, Kana slept under natural shelter or, if none, constructed a small thatched hut each night as he trekked further north. The land on the other side of the mountains was mostly the same as his lands, but there were enough differences that he had to be vigilant and move carefully as he went. After a few days, he wondered if Lalo and his mother and the rest of his group had given him up for lion food. The thought brought a chuckle. But when he returned, would they laugh?

On the sixth day, the land grew greener, the bush thicker, the trees taller. Kana came upon a great freshwater lake, so big he couldn’t see the other side. Creatures with green scaly skin splashed in and out of the water, and huge white birds with long orange beaks skimmed the water hunting for food. In the forest beside the lake he encountered snakes bigger and more numerous than he’d ever seen. While fewer of the buzzing, swarming flies dogged him here than in the open bush, more insects of every size, color, and shape flew, crept, and crawled under the leafy canopy. He slept in the upper branches of the trees for two nights, glad that he’d decided to venture outside his own lands and anxious to see more.

* * *

One night in the forest, Kana killed a monkey, a gray-haired female with orange eyes and a funny little squashed face. While he cooked the monkey’s flesh over his fire, he was reminded of the last time he ate baboon. It had been after a late-night hunt under a full moon, in which all the men of the group had taken part. And Ngolo had retold the tale of Kika and the Lion.

After a large communal meal, Ngolo usually told a story to the men around the fire, after which the women would dance and sing. Often, he would spin tales of his youthful exploits, but this time he told the story of Kika, which Kana and most of the others knew by heart but always loved to hear anyway. Ngolo didn’t merely tell his stories, he acted out all of the parts—including the animals—changing his voice and posture to inhabit the characters he was portraying. And sometimes when he told the story, he added or changed details to keep his listeners on their toes.

Kika, Ngolo told them, was a lazy young man who had no skill for hunting and lacked courage. He loved honey above all things, and though he was good at finding it, he never shared what he gathered, not even with the honeyguides who were foolish enough to lead him to it. One day a honeyguide called to Kika and offered to take him to a tree with the biggest beehive it had ever seen. “The tree is as fat with honey,” said the honeyguide, “as a woman with child.” This sounded good to Kika, who eagerly followed along. He didn’t remember this honeyguide, as the little gray birds all looked alike to him. But this honeyguide remembered Kika.

The last time the bird had led Kika to honey, Kika, as usual, shared none. So on this day the honeyguide led Kika not to honey but to a solitary old lion. The lion had recently been ousted from his pride by a younger, stronger male. Having been weakened in the fight, he slept in the shade of a large tree. Approaching from the other side of the tree, Kika did not see the lion lying behind the tree’s wide trunk. As soon as the honeyguide alit on one of the branches, it woke the lion with a chirp and spoke to it as it spoke to men. “I’ve brought you food,” the bird said. “All I ask in return is that you leave me his eyes.”

The lion stirred and rose up on his haunches, angry at being woken, at having been cast out of his pride, but mostly at having not eaten in several days. He took one look at Kika and licked his nose with his great rough tongue. Kika figured he had no chance to kill the lion or to outrun him, no matter how old he might be. So he scampered up the tree as fast as he could, dropping his ax, bow, and arrows as he did and barely escaping the lion’s jaws that snapped shut just below his feet.

The lion stood on his hind legs and looked up at Kika, his large claws digging into the tree’s trunk. “I’ve waited many days to eat,” growled the lion. “I can wait longer than you.” And he lay down at the base of the tree to wait.

Kika looked down hopelessly at the lion below and turned angrily on the honeyguide on the branch above him, cursing it. The honeyguide just laughed and said, “You still owe me a meal.” Then he flew away, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll be back later to feast on your eyes.”

For two days and nights, Kika waited for the lion to give up and leave. But the lion spoke the truth when he told Kika he could wait longer than he. Finally, weak with thirst and hunger, Kika decided he had to be brave. If he continued to wait in the tree, he would eventually tire and fall or die of thirst—either way, the lion would eat him. The lion would probably eat him no matter what, but at least if he tried to kill the lion, he wouldn’t die a coward. Kika didn’t know how to be brave, so he decided to pretend he was, and that might be enough to fool the lion.

Kika pulled out his knife with one hand and dropped down to the ground. With his other hand he grabbed a handful of earth. The lion came at him instantly and Kika threw the handful of dirt and pebbles into the lion’s face, stopping the beast for a moment. Kika yelled and waved his arms like a madman, confusing the lion. Then he leapt on the lion’s back and plunged his knife into the animal’s neck. Despite the lion’s age and weakness from hunger, he was still strong and proud. He reared back and swatted Kika off his back and let out a terrible roar. Kika wasn’t going to kill him so easily.

Now Kika was frightened. The lion was bleeding but not fatally injured and slowly stalked toward Kika, his eyes staring into Kika’s.

(Ngolo was on all fours at this point in the story, playing the role of the lion, staring menacingly into the eyes of every man and boy gathered around him.)

Kika picked up his bow and nocked an arrow on his string, pulling it back as the lion laughed. Kika trembled as the lion leapt at him, and Kika let his arrow fly. The lion landed on top of Kika, his mouth poised over Kika’s throat, his breath hot and sticky. But instead of killing Kika then and there, the lion howled in agony and limped off in bewildered pain and confusion.

(“How had Kika done it?” Ngolo asked his audience, though of course all but the youngest child knew the answer.)

Kika knew he wasn’t skilled or strong enough to strike a killing blow with his bow, so instead of trying to thread an arrow between the lion’s ribs and puncture his heart, he aimed for the most vulnerable spot on the lion’s underside—his balls. With a lucky shot, the lion was crippled and staggered back under the shade of his tree. Though not yet dead, the poison from Kika’s arrow was in him and would kill him by and by. The lion lay in torment and asked Kika for mercy, which Kika gave him just as the honeyguide returned, as it said it would, only to find that the man had spoiled his plans.

Kika took the lion’s head but left his eyes for the honeyguide.

“I no longer owe you a meal,” he said, hoping that the bird would never try to trick him again.

When Kika showed his brothers the lion’s head, they returned for his carcass and the whole group feasted. Kika kept the lion’s hide for the floor of his hut, but shared his mane, from which his brothers made headdresses.

“Was Kika not a man that day?” asked Ngolo.

“Yes!” the men cried. “He was a man!”

“Kika was a man that day,” said Ngolo. “But not because he was brave.” Ngolo was changing the moral of the story, as he sometimes did. “No, but because for once he thought of his family before himself.”

The men nodded and laughed. And the women started to clap in rhythm and dance around the fire, singing their joyful, mystical songs.

Kana sighed, remembering that night, but knew that he would return to hear more of Ngolo’s tales when he was ready.

* * *

Toward the end of Kana’s third day crossing the rainforest, jungle gave way to grassland, and enormous shafts of stone appeared to erupt from the surrounding highlands, revealing vertical rock faces that soared high above. Kana saw new animals, birds, and plants. He found a waterfall concealing a roomy cave, where he made camp for the night. After bathing in the falling water, he ate what he’d managed to gather and slept in the cave under its pitted ceiling, dark and alive with hundreds of bats who were just waking up. In the morning, he gathered up his bow and arrows and skins and climbed as high as he dared to look out over where he was and where he’d been. From this height, it looked to him as if he could see the entire world.

On the day after the second full moon since his departure, Kana came to a great river. Even had he known how to swim, it would have been too wide and too deep to cross. He stopped and leaned on his bow, and considered the choice before him. He had to change direction, but should that direction be back? Gone from home for so long, he’d begun dreading the reception upon his return. Would Lalo welcome him back, be angry with him, or would she have already moved on to someone else? Would anyone care to hear about the things he’d seen, or would Ngolo and the others ostracize him? Would his mother be relieved to see him, or hurt? Or would everything simply go back to normal, as if he’d never gone at all?

Kana strolled closer to the river, to get a closer look at this most impressive new sight. Then he saw something he hadn’t before.

The thing must have been made by men, though he’d seen no men about, had seen none since he left camp. It was sitting on the riverbank among the reeds, half in a pool out of the current of the river, one end floating on the water. It looked like a thatch hut that had been stretched lengthwise and turned upside-down. Kana approached warily, expecting someone to arrive, but no one appeared. The thing was made of thick reeds tightly woven together and the sides were cinched together at each end. Inside was a kind of bow with a flat end. Kana could see what the thing must have been made for and looked across the river to the opposite shore, wondering if he would be able to guide it all the way there. He looked around. It would be wrong to take another man’s tools, he knew, but whoever had made these things had left them here. Besides, if he used them and then brought them back, where was the harm in that?

His curiosity to find out what was on the other side was stronger than any misgiving.

He climbed down into the thing and quickly began to question his decision. The craft was more malleable than it looked, stretching and deforming with his shifting weight as he knelt down in it. Still, with some difficulty, he pushed off from shore and into the river. Instead of floating on top of the river, the thing sat so low that the water nearly came up over the sides. Gently using the flat-ended bow to propel himself, Kana was pleased, however, to see that he could drive the thing forward and even steer without too much difficulty.

The river, however, looked more placid from shore. Once in its current, Kana realized it was moving swiftly, and he had to fight against it with all his strength. The other side of the river looked even further away now, and his craft was beginning to take on water as he paddled with furious but unfocused intensity. Kana had never before been in the center of such a great body of water, and the sensation of being a slight thing so easily tossed about, of being enveloped, almost suffocated by the opaque gray-green water, was nearly overwhelming.

He continued to paddle as hard as he could—right side, then left, then right again—making steady progress across the river, though still drifting down current. Finally, the other shore seemed within reach. He aimed for a muddy beach with a shallow approach and managed to get close enough to shore that he could hop out and drag the waterlogged craft the last few steps onto the mudflat and collapse, exhausted and wet with sweat and river water.

Kana sat up and shook his head, his heart pounding, his breaths coming hard and fast. Standing then, he walked up to the water’s edge and knelt down to get a drink. He thanked the river for giving him water to drink and for not killing him.

Concealing his borrowed watercraft in the weeds, he collected his bow and quiver and climbed the rise just beyond the riverbank to see what was on the other side.

Atop the rise, Kana wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Amid a vast brown expanse was an oasis of lush green fields laid out in equal squares and crisscrossed by little rivers as straight as arrows, the reflected sunlight bright enough to make him squint. At the center of it all, surrounded by a huge wall, was a sprawling camp of stone huts, with people swarming like ants everywhere—more people in one place than he’d seen in his life. In the middle of that was the largest stone hut, like a manmade mountain, with men or animals carved out of some kind of shimmering, honey-hued stone. It was the most beautiful and terrifying thing Kana had ever seen.

Again, curiosity overrode any doubt, and Kana crept down into the fields of grass.  Crouching low, he moved down a path cut between two fields. The grasses were tall enough to conceal him, the golden seeds atop their stalks swaying back and forth with the wind. He stopped to examine the grains more closely, pulling a head of one of the stalks down to his nose. He sniffed it and pulled off the seeds with his teeth. The seeds were hard and tasteless, but he was hungry and chewed them into a gritty consistency he could swallow.

Kana heard the man before he saw him. Walking along a path that crossed his own, he could hear his footsteps on the soft earth, then his voice as he muttered some gibberish. Kana ducked into the grasses, his belly on the ground, hand grasping his bow, and could make out the man as he walked along. The first man he’d seen in two months was dressed in brightly colored skins covering his legs and chest. His head was covered with what looked like the cap of a huge mushroom, and there were shiny, honey-colored stones hanging from his ears and around his neck and wrists. He was carrying a slab of clay and making marks in it with a stick. There was an older boy walking behind him, nearly naked but for a dun-colored loincloth and a stone collar, like the other man’s ornaments but stained green. Kana waited for them to pass and only emerged from the grass when they were out of sight.

Kana exhaled, shook off a slight tremor in his limbs, and took one last look at the encampment of stone before crouching down to creep back toward the river. The people here did not look or talk like the people he knew. And as much as he wanted to see this strange place up close, to walk inside its manmade caves and touch the honey-stone figures, who knew what these people would do to him if he suddenly appeared among them? He knew that now was the time to turn back.

But somewhere amid the identical rows of grasses, Kana made a wrong turn and was suddenly at a crossroads, being stared at open-mouthed by the boy he’d seen from his belly just a few moments earlier. The boy, alarmed, stopped in his tracks and stared at the sight of Kana before him.

Without thinking, Kana nocked an arrow onto his bow and pulled back the string. But as soon as he had the boy lined up, he stopped. The boy, eyes wide, turned on his heels and ran in the opposite direction. Kana dropped his bow and let the arrow fall to the ground. Once the boy rounded a corner of tall grass, he raised the alarm, yelling more of what sounded like gibberish to Kana’s ears.

Kana turned, his heart racing and his skin cold with sweat, and searched for a way back to the river. Already, however, he began to hear more voices shouting. He started to run, heedless of being seen above the grass. But before he got far he was cornered by men carrying spears and other weapons he’d never seen, all tipped with the shiny stone the man had worn round his neck and reflecting the sun’s light.

Then a sharp blow to the back of his head knocked him senseless.

* * *

When Kana opened his eyes, he was inside the walls of the stone encampment. His head was throbbing and he could feel dried blood from where the shaft had struck him. He tried to get up, but his head stopped abruptly, held down by something. They had put a stone collar around his neck and chained the collar to the board on which they laid him. There was no sign of his captors, but people were milling about and walking back and forth all around him. All of them looked angry. Kana’s bow and quiver were gone, as was his pouch with flint and knife, his hatchet, and his skins. They’d left him naked, defenseless, and chained to a plank of wood.

Some of the people walking around wore neck collars as the boy had and as Kana did now. They mostly wore dirty loincloths and nothing else. Others were more covered, and some wore colorful skins with shiny stones hanging from their ears and noses or around their wrists and fingers. Anything around their necks seemed to be purely decorative. The uncollared ones looked more at ease, but neither they nor the others ever seemed to smile. Kana wondered what it was they had to be so unhappy about.

Without warning, a man unhooked the chain holding him to the board and pulled him to his feet. Another man, swollen like a tick with a red, bulbous nose, faced Kana, who stood there covering his nakedness with his hands. Kana noticed other men surrounding him, including the man who’d carried the clay tablet in the fields, and others armed like hunters, intently watching him. The red-nosed man started questioning Kana, pointing at him accusingly and then out at the field where he’d been captured. Finally, he seemed to demand something from him, but Kana couldn’t understand a word he said and just stared back at him in mute bewilderment.

The man holding his leash suddenly cracked Kana on the backs of his thighs with a whip, causing Kana to drop to his knees. But the man yanked him back up, while the red-nosed man repeated his question. Kana could only shake his head in confusion and pain, and finally cried, “Please, I don’t understand!” He looked around at the strangers in desperation and began to fear that they took him for some kind of animal.

The red-nosed man’s expression turned from anger to amusement. Then he started laughing, and the others joined him. As Kana looked at their faces, he realized this was the first time he’d seen any of them smile, and it chilled him. The man motioned to the others, and they dragged Kana away, out of the center of the encampment to north of the walls—a place where hundreds of collared men carried mud bricks from a field where they were formed and dried, to the walls of the stone hut they were building.

The overseer had Kana’s legs shackled so that he could do little more than shuffle and put him in the line with the others hauling bricks. When Kana refused to carry a load of the heavy mud bricks, the overseer beat his legs with a long, flexible reed. But, as Kana was only restrained by the shackles on his feet, he threw himself at the overseer and paid him back for the treatment he had received since his capture.

When they finally dragged Kana off of the overseer, they took him away, this time to a room inside one of the large mud-brick buildings inside the camp walls. The room was small, dark, and stiflingly hot. The air stank of shit, and the cramped space left no room for Kana to stand upright or lie comfortably. So he sat and hugged his knees, plagued by fears he could not name. At intervals, he banged on the thick wooden door, barred on the other side, and screamed at his captors to let him out. He began to doubt that anyone could even hear him.

Days passed. How many was impossible for Kana to know, as no sunshine could enter his cell, and no one visited to give him food or water. The heat made him drip sweat, which only aggravated his thirst. He drank the only thing he could, which was whatever fluids his body produced. His belly was in agony from hunger, and he gnawed the dead skin from around the nails of his fingers and toes until they bled. He cried, thirsty to the point of death. Soon too dehydrated to produce tears, he began to dread the pain of each moment more than the last.

He was half-conscious when a man finally came to rouse him with something to drink and eat. Kana gulped down the drink from a clay bowl, though choked at first when he realized it was not water. He thought it might have been piss, but the taste was not so bad, and he found he could stomach it if he drank it slowly. The food was a mushy paste that tasted like the grains he’d eaten in the field when he first arrived. But the bland gruel and murky water satisfied his thirst and his hunger, and he fell asleep with a belly aching from being full.

After Kana was fed and watered once more and removed from his cell, he was marched to the construction site and back into line. Again, Kana refused to work, certain that they would see they had no choice but to set him free and let him return home. Instead, they hauled Kana back to the building from which he’d been released that morning. Kana tensed, intent on showing them his resolve. Upon seeing the barred wooden door to his cell, however, Kana broke down, his body going limp, his bones turned to liquid. He told his captors that he would carry the bricks now. He would do whatever they wanted, he cried, falling to the ground to hug his captors’ ankles, making sure they understood he was begging for mercy. Kana did not fear death, but he was terrified of that cell and the tortures suffered inside. He would rather do anything than go back into that place.

The door was unbarred—the cell’s opening like the maw of some half-dead creature—and Kana thrown in. When the door latched behind him, it went dark, and he was alone in the creature’s belly once again.

When his jailors finally came for him the second time, reviving him with porridge and weak beer, Kana’s brown skin was ashen. The light staggered him as he stumbled outside. His limbs trembled under their own weight. But when they put him back in line, he carried the bricks without complaint.

II

Each year brought another flood. And after each flood, the cycle around which the city revolved began anew. Irrigate. Sow. Reap. Repeat. But Kana’s life revolved not around the growing cycles of nature but the hewed stone, mud bricks, and hard metal tools of the building site. For seven years he worked on the temple complex at the north end of the city—seven years wearing the tarnished copper collar that marked him a slave. Terror was soon worn away by repetition, and he grew accustomed to the numb dread of each day. At night, when he lay exhausted on the dirt floor of the slave quarters, locked inside along with the other bodies, he had only his thoughts to keep him company. Most times his thoughts tormented him with regret. Other times he took what comfort he could from recalling his past life, as free and happy and limitless as it now seemed. He envisioned Gonwa growing into a mischievous little boy, learning to use his first bow, which Lalo would have made for him. In his mind, he relived the stories Ngolo would tell, acting them out around the fire. He cherished his brief time as Lalo’s lover.

For the first year, Kana’s labor was back-breaking and ceaseless. His overseers worked him every day from before dawn to after dark, giving him the most strenuous, physically exhausting jobs. In that first year, he gave up hope of his enslavement ever ending. He dreamed of escape but hoped for death. Because he could not bring himself to take his own life, however, he toiled just to stay out of the cell.

In Kana’s second year, he was given a girl called Phaluteh to make babies with. She was meant as a reward, but Phaluteh was half-wild and spoke neither Kana’s native tongue nor the language he’d spent the last year struggling to understand. She scared him. They shared a room with three other pairs of slaves then, and each day the men were released before dawn to work on the temple complex while the women went off to work in the kitchens. And each day, the slave-master Melthior asked Kana if he’d sown his seed in the girl’s belly yet, and that they’d better make some babies fast.

But Kana didn’t dare lay a hand on Phaluteh for fear of what she might do to him. Though she was small, she was fierce and shot him an evil eye every time he looked at her. Why she hated him, he did not know, and she couldn’t say in a language he understood. But over time Phaluteh learned enough of their captors’ language to warn Kana of her powers.

“I am mun-num—a shape-changer,” she told him. “I can change into a leopard when I’m angry. So don’t anger me, or I may become a leopard, tear your heart out, and devour it before you. Then I’ll drink your blood and scrape the meat from your bones with my tongue.”

Kana didn’t think it wise to test her, nor could he see any reason to doubt her. Since his enslavement in the city, he’d learned about all manner of unnatural creatures, including the river god who held sway over even the ruler of this place.

Why she did not just use her powers to escape, Kana did not know. If he could change into a leopard, he would rip the throats out of his overseers and run far away.

Sleeping beside a feral shape-shifter every night was no more dangerous than the work Kana engaged in daily. Walls and ceilings caved in, wood scaffoldings collapsed, and bricks dropped down from second- and third-story platforms, maiming, crippling, and killing the enslaved laborers lucky enough to be in their way. Mostly the work was draining and monotonous, sapping one’s energy and will—debilitating to those who did it long enough.

Soon after Phaluteh arrived, and despite his best efforts to go unnoticed, Kana was promoted from hauling bricks and other kinds of menial labor to laying foundations and plastering walls. When he saw an arch for the first time being built of wedge-shaped bricks, he understood intuitively how it worked and saw how more complex structures could be made using the same idea. Kana learned the geometry the engineers used, grasping the abstract use of numbers and standardized units of measure that allowed them to plan great structures. In his free moments, he would trace geometric patterns in the earth—abstractions at first, eventually designs for buildings that would only ever exist in his mind. No one taught him. His brain just worked that way. He became more useful to his masters, and the mental energy he spent on such things kept his mind off his predicament.

Once Phaluteh saw that Kana would not molest her and could begin to understand the words he used, she stopped giving him the evil eye. One night after everyone was asleep, as they lay back to back on the floor of their quarters, she could not sleep. So she rolled over to look at the back of him.

“Kana,” she whispered. “Kana.”

Kana awoke, unsure at first who had called his name. He turned to see Phaluteh staring at him curiously and gave her a confused look.

“Kana, how did you come to be here?”

“What … here, next to you?” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Not here,” she said, annoyed. “How did you come to be a slave?”

Kana had never spoken to anyone of his life before being enslaved. He did not have friends among his fellow slaves, who fought among themselves for the petty privileges and favors doled out by their keepers. He lay on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think of the words to say. “I was captured, like you,” he said.

“Where did you come from?”

“South, beyond the river and over some mountains, past a freshwater sea and a forest.” He pictured the land where he had grown up. “Where I was from had hills and vast plains filled with thorn bushes and some large baobab trees. There was a saltwater lake and fresh streams and ponds. Mostly it was dry and hard, but there was always enough for us to eat.”

“Your village?” she asked.

“We had no village,” he said. “We camped wherever there were roots and berries, fresh water, and game to hunt. And when they got scarce, we moved on.”

“How did they capture you?”

“One day, I left my home to hunt the lands beyond our borders,” he said. “I was gone two months before I came to the river. When I saw the river, I was curious. I wanted to see what was on the other side. After I crossed the river, I set my eyes on the city for the first time. I thought it was a dream.” Kana told her what led to his discovery and capture.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why did you leave your people’s lands? Were there no longer enough animals to hunt?”

Kana closed his eyes, shook his head. “I wanted to see what lay outside our lands,” he said. “I had to know what else there was … If only I had stopped before crossing the river.” He closed his eyes again, ashamed and angry at himself.

“I would never have left home at all,” said Phaluteh. “My mother was the priestess in our village. She was mun-num, like me. I would have been priestess after her.” In the dark of the room, Kana could see her eyes looking past him to a hated memory. “When the king’s soldiers came to our village, they burned everything,” she said, her voice sounding small and sharp like a thorn dragged across a rock. “Our warriors didn’t have armor or metal weapons, so they were killed quickly, my older brothers among them. They killed all of the elders, including my parents, then took turns using me in front of my younger sister. Then they made slaves of us all.”

Kana swallowed. “Why did you not change into a leopard and kill those men?” he asked.

Phaluteh hesitated a moment before answering. “I couldn’t change shape then,” she said. “I was still too young.”

They lay in silence looking at each other for a while, until Kana reached out to touch Phaluteh’s cheek. She flinched and snatched his hand with hers. His hand was warm, whereas hers got cold at night. She held onto his hand and squeezed it tight between her calloused fingers, allowing it to rest on her cheek.

“You were a fool,” she said. “To leave a home that was safe, where you were loved.”

Kana had been alone for so long. He felt the tears spill down his cheeks and roll off his nose before he knew he was weeping. He saw the tears in Phaluteh’s eyes welling up, held back by stubbornness and anger.

“I know,” he said.

* * *

Under the vault of the dome, where Kana toiled and the heat baked his body, beads of sweat rolled down his nose and fell eighty cubits below. Kana buttered the edges of a thin red brick with mortar before putting it in place next to its neighbor. He and his fellow slaves had been doing so since before sunup. Their job was almost complete, with only days of masonry work left before the artisans would be able to gild the outside of the huge spherical dome.

The idea for the dome had been the king’s, and it had spelled the end of the previous royal architect. Now, in its nearly finished form, its realization was due to Kana’s ingenuity. Nothing like it had ever been seen by anyone in the city. It was unique in all the world as far as they knew, and big enough to awe any of the kingdom’s enemies. Kana should have been proud, but any pride had been trained out of him.

It was dusk, and Melthior would round them all up soon enough and return them to their quarters. Kana stopped work to step up onto the scaffolding’s railing and look out over the rough opening of the dome. A northern breeze cooled the skin on his face as he turned into it. The river looked almost black in the near darkness, but the sky glowed pink and violet. The sun, large and orange on the western horizon, threw long shadows on the buildings of the complex below, and the city beyond was mostly in silhouette. Everything looked so orderly and flawless from this height. But Kana was immune to the city’s charms. He stepped down onto the platform, gathered his tools, and tried to push unwelcome thoughts out of his mind.

Since the night they had told each other their stories, Kana and Phaluteh had been lovers. For three floods and three harvests, they lived as husband and wife, though no rite consecrated their bond. It was all the same to Kana, as his people had no such rite anyway. Phaluteh never conceived a child, something they were both privately glad of.

At the same time, as Kana’s skill as a mason grew, he saw his worth grow beyond the other slaves. The foremen came to rely on him when implementing the architect’s plans, as he saved them from costly mistakes and delays. Kana understood structural engineering more intuitively than any of the foremen and even the royal architect, and had a genius for how to use the clay, mud, wood, and stone materials they had to work with.

But the royal architect had not consulted Kana on the construction of the first dome. When the dome collapsed, killing half a dozen court officials and more than forty slaves, the king had the royal architect ritually sacrificed to the river god on the site of the ruined altar. His neck was slit, and his blood fed the rubble and, presumably, the offended god as well. After, they burned his body in a skiff on the river, leaving his ashes to blow away on the four winds. The new architect was loath to earn the same fate.

The king had wanted an enormous egg-shaped dome built over the temple altar. But no one had ever seen such a roof—other than on the modest beehive mud huts of the western tribes—let alone built such a structure. It was a dubious honor to be tasked with such an impossible request.

Jehepset, the new royal architect, was haughty and proud, like all of the king’s courtiers. He was not too proud, however, to quietly bring in Kana and pick the brains of this unusually prodigious slave. Luckily for Jehepset, Kana had already given the problem some thought. Unlike the previous architect, Kana understood that load-bearing arches needed reinforcing because of the outward forces they exerted, pressure he had felt with his own hands. Normally, arches received this reinforcement from the walls in which they were built. For a dome such as the king wanted, applying the arch concept in the round would have required either outside supports or inner rods to hold the thing up—neither of which were used.

But Kana had come up with a simpler solution.

Ceramic bricks, like the ones in the vaulted ceilings of the royal palace, were lightweight, waterproof, and strong. Using a quick-drying mortar that he’d mixed himself, Kana found that the ceramic-brick vaulting was stronger than any timber ceiling and lighter than stone. The bricks could be adapted to the circular dome shape and, built up a row at a time, span a great distance.

When he presented to Jehepset a scale model of the spherical dome constructed of the ceramic bricks and using the same mortar, he demonstrated its strength by climbing on top of the three-cubit-high dome with half a dozen of his fellow laborers. Because it was so lightweight and did not need extra buttressing, it could be built higher than the egg-shaped dome that had imploded so disastrously. A circular opening at the apex would allow sunlight in, which in the spring and fall would trace a line from the front door of the temple to the golden idol—the jackal-headed river god—behind the altar. Cloaked in gold leaf, the dome would shine brilliantly in the sun, announcing one of the wonders of the world to everyone for many miles around.

Jehepset was pleased. And when he presented the model and plans to the thirteen-year-old king, Hekas, the king called it genius.

“Can you build it?” he asked.

Jehepset assured him that he could.

“Good,” said Hekas. “Because if you don’t, when I sacrifice you to the river god, I won’t be so merciful.”

Kana looked on, feeling a mixture of pride and unease.

Hekas was ten when he inherited the throne. So far he had resisted King Narmer, who ruled the land to the north and looked to add Hekas’s kingdom to his own. When Narmer’s proposal of marriage to Hekas’s widowed mother was rebuffed, he offered his own adult daughter to Hekas. But Hekas did not want to be a prince, even of a larger kingdom. Hekas intended the massive complex, with its royal palace and temple, as a statement of defiance to Narmer. With a golden dome soaring higher than any structure in any other land, it would be a thumb in Narmer’s eye, daring him to match its grandeur if he could or bow down before it.

When Kana broke ground on what he thought of as his temple, he couldn’t help but feel a thrill of satisfaction. As work progressed, as the artisans crafted gold and jeweled idols, and artists and sculptors planned colorful murals and statuary to fill the temple, an illicit pride nagged at Kana to be owned.

After a full season had passed, the structure that would hold up the enormous dome was complete. The clay bricks had been formed, dried, and fired in the kilns of the potters. The wood scaffolds were erected and secured in place for Kana and his fellow masons to begin work. On the morning after the first day of laying the bricks that would form the base of the dome, Kana lay with Phaluteh on top of him, straddling his hips and moving slowly back and forth. With the stars still visible, the horizon glowed from the looming sun, and the others remained asleep. Kana and Phaluteh had made this time of morning their own. Phaluteh liked to whisper while they made love, looking into Kana’s eyes, trying to read his thoughts and find his mind.

“What are you so proud of?” she said with a smirk.

Kana stifled a laugh.

“You haven’t finished your work yet, you know.”

“If I do it well,” he said, “what do I get?”

“The chance to do it again tomorrow.”

She leaned forward, pressing into him, and they finished in near silence so as not to wake the others.

Phaluteh slid off of Kana and lay close beside him. His skin was hot, and she nuzzled close for warmth and because she had grown fond of his odor, pungent and acrid though it was. To Kana, she smelled of the kitchens and something else uniquely her own—earthy and sweet. He gently traced the line of her collarbone with a fingertip and lamented the tarnished copper collar that hid her neck and reminded him of his own.

That day, he buttered bricks, laid them in staggered rows along the base of the dome of the temple, ached, and perspired in the heat. In his mind he was not building a temple to some invisible river god, but a palace for Phaluteh and himself. When he was done, he would sneak her inside to experience the beauty of his creation, to honor the laborers who erected it and the artisans whose sculptures and murals decorated its columns and walls.

But when he was returned to his quarters that night, Phaluteh was gone.

The three other couples and their young children who shared the room were already huddled around their fires, preparing supper, nursing, and talking. Where Phaluteh normally sat was a squat young girl of fourteen or fifteen with reddish-brown hair and red-rimmed eyes, her cheeks wet with tears.

Kana burst out of their quarters and caught the slave-master Melthior standing outside the row of mud huts. “Master, please,” he said to him, his voice trembling, head bowed, “where has Phaluteh gone?”

Melthior shrugged. “She’s gone, that’s enough for you to know.”

Kana shook his head desperately. “But why, master?” he asked.

“You have a new one, don’t you?” he said, irritated.

“But I want Phaluteh,” Kana demanded.

The slave-master casually struck Kana hard in the mouth with the back of his rough, scaly hand. Melthior stood over him now, a hand on his coiled whip, shaking his head while Kana knelt, holding his stinging jaw. “Had you not noticed that your woman was barren?” Melthior asked. “The new one is already with child. If she survives the labor, you can make some of your own on her.”

Melthior walked away but Kana pursued him. “I need to see Jehepset,” he implored him.

“What for?”

“Temple business,” Kana lied.

“See him tomorrow morning before work,” he said. “I’ll take you to him.”

“I need to see him now,” said Kana. “It’s urgent.”

Melthior looked as though he might strike Kana again. But as he thought it over, he finally sneered and said, “Follow me.”

The slave huts were lined up opposite the new northern wall of the city, beyond the inner wall of the temple complex, all of which used to be outside the city walls. The king and his family had moved into the recently completed royal palace south of the temple, and his courtiers now occupied the attached apartments. Kana walked past the shell of the temple, the newly planted pleasure garden, with its fountains and reflecting pools, and through a rear entrance at the back of the palace.

Jehepset was reclining beside a low table with an array of fish, meat, olives, fruit, bread, and colorful trays filled with what Kana presumed was food. While three others dined with him, the royal architect drank from a silver goblet. When Jehepset turned to see Kana and the overseer standing there, he frowned.

“What is it?” he asked, a tinge of panic in his voice.

Before Melthior could answer, Kana approached Jehepset on his knees and begged forgiveness. “My woman, Phaluteh, was taken from me today,” Kana said. “I don’t know why, but you’re the only one who can help me.”

Jehepset looked at Melthior, who feigned surprise, and then gestured to Kana with his head. Melthior quickly pulled Kana to his feet, and Jehepset stood and led them out of the room.

In the hallway, Jehepset looked steadily at Kana and said to him, “There is no trouble with the dome?”

“No.”

“Good,” Jehepset said and sighed with relief.

“I need your help, my lord,” said Kana. “Phaluteh and I—”

Kana stopped talking as Melthior leaned over to whisper in Jehepset’s ear, loud enough for Kana to hear most of what he said. She could not bear children … thrown in with the soldiers’ girls.

Jehepset nodded and turned to a distraught Kana. “I cannot help you,” he said.

“But, my lord,” Kana begged. “She is no whore. She’s my woman. I need her. We need each other.”

“You have another,” said Jehepset, shaking his head and looking at Kana with a mixture of pity and amusement. “A woman for a slave is a privilege. You ought to be grateful. Besides, there’s nothing I could do, even if I wanted to.”

Kana knew that was a lie. He neared Jehepset and spoke in a whisper. “I designed your king’s precious dome,” he hissed. “I am the one responsible for your king’s favor, which you well know, even if he doesn’t.”

Jehepset recoiled from Kana and stared at him in dismay.

“You created nothing,” he spat. He stepped back, composed himself, and said, “You are nothing.” With a malicious sneer, Jehepset flashed his teeth. “You’ve forgotten your place, so let me remind you.” He snapped his fingers at Melthior, who grasped Kana’s arms and was soon joined by two other guards. They whisked Kana off his feet and down the hall as Jehepset turned and walked away.

Outside, as the guards dragged Kana through the dust and dirt, past the old wall of the city, he knew where Melthior was leading them, but he didn’t care. Before the door to his old cell, the slave-master grinned and said to him, “You’re a fool. He doesn’t need you anymore, Kana. Be grateful it’s only the cell.”

With that, he shoved Kana inside and barred the door behind him.

Kana lay curled on the floor, his body convulsed by sobs. He cried for Phaluteh, whose fate was too horrible to imagine. He prayed that she would transform into a leopard and kill anyone who laid a finger on her. When he was done weeping for Phaluteh, he clawed at his face, slammed his shoulders and head against the door, beat his fists bloody against the floor. He was a fool. It had taken this for him to finally accept what he’d known the day they captured him: he was not a man to them, but a lower form of life, to be used as they saw fit.

For days, Kana slipped in and out of consciousness until only the pain in the pit of his stomach from thirst and hunger remained. He wanted to die, but as always they brought him back from the brink of death to continue his torture.

He was fed and watered, and brought before Jehepset still trembling, pale, and rank.

“I’m going to give you a choice,” said Jehepset. “Continue to work as a mason on the temple dome, or go back to hauling bricks in the sun until your back breaks.” Before Kana could respond, Jehepset held up a finger in warning. “Answer me this first.”

Kana nodded slowly.

“Who designed the dome?” he asked.

Kana hesitated, then said, “You, my lord.”

“And what are you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Kana.

“Good,” said Jehepset. Then to Melthior, “Put him back in the cell for another few days to make sure he doesn’t forget.”

* * *

It had happened over a year ago. Kana had since buried himself in the work of finishing the dome. He could not bring himself to befriend the young girl who’d replaced Phaluteh, nor show any interest in the infant she gave birth to, who was too young to know she was enslaved and would never be free.

As he began to descend the scaffolding, he heard a far-off clap of machinery, of metal slapping wood, and shouts coming from the direction of the river. He climbed back up to peer over the top of the unfinished dome and saw them.

Dark shapes emerged from behind the ridge screening a bend in the river—Narmer’s fleet. Flames had already begun to engulf the king’s ships, lighting up the sky, and soldiers from Narmer’s army streamed off the ships anchored on the west bank, hundreds of them with their siege engines, forming tight phalanxes and marching toward the walls of the city, their bronze breastplates and long spears reflecting the light of the river fires.

Kana shook his head, unsure if what he was seeing was real. Soon he could hear the city’s soldiers massing below to man the walls, shouting orders and exhortations of their own. It was real enough.

Kana let out a yelp of alarm, then laughed in half-crazed glee. With one hand he covered his mouth and with the other gripped the edge of the unfinished dome to steady himself. His fellow masons looked up, concerned, and soon a more composed Kana was down among them, telling everyone he could to flee, that soldiers were marching on the city. By the temple’s grand entrance, he told the foreman the city was under attack and they needed to get to safety, that he would make sure the temple was protected, and the man nodded, terrified and confused, leading the others away without once thinking about the sense of Kana’s words.

Hurrying outside, where slaves, craftsmen, soldiers, mules, and wheeled carts all rushed about in confusion, Kana found a barrow filled with straw for brick-making and hauled it inside the temple. He placed piles of straw around the bases of the scaffolding, using every last scrap. Grabbing an oil lamp from the wall, he lit the piles and watched in grim satisfaction as the flames climbed the wood supports, quickly turning the interior of the temple into a monstrous kiln.

Kana, eyes wide at the inferno he’d created, stumbled outside to escape the heat and suffocating smoke he’d unleashed. Looking back, the temple resembled a very large and efficient chimney, and Kana hoped it had enough fuel to burn itself down.

He turned to see soldiers running across the campus toward the northern wall. Behind them stalked Melthior. He glared at Kana, oil lamp still in hand, the temple’s every opening glowing orange, smoke pouring out of the open dome. He unfurled his whip with a snarl and drew it back. Without thinking, Kana threw the ceramic lamp at his face. Though it sailed past his head, Melthior, off-balance, could manage only a feeble lash of his whip. Kana grabbed hold of the whip’s frayed end and pulled it toward him. As Melthior held on with all his might, Kana realized something he hadn’t before. He was stronger than Melthior. As he drew the overseer closer to him, Kana yanked Melthior forward and drove the heel of his palm into the older man’s nose. Melthior staggered and dropped to his knees, blood flowing down over his mouth and chin. Before he could get back on his feet, Kana wrapped the whip around his bare neck and closed the loop tight. Though Melthior clawed and lashed out at him, Kana paid it no mind as he tightened the loop, tighter with each breath that Melthior exhaled, until the overseer ceased struggling and Kana let his body drop to the ground.

In the chaos of the attack, the temple complex was deserted but for the occasional group of soldiers running through on their way to the north wall. Past sunset, the only light came from the burning temple, though Kana could make out small fires blooming to the north, along with the shouts and screams of soldiers. Coiling Melthior’s whip in his hand, Kana ran out of the complex toward the western gate, which, with the northern gate besieged, he guessed would have few soldiers guarding it.

In the corridor between the inner and outer walls, about a dozen soldiers in tight formation appeared out of the darkness and ran past him on their way to the northern wall. When a straggler dashed past him a moment later, Kana turned and flicked the whip at the soldier’s feet, grabbing his ankle and sending him flying face-first to the ground. Beside the fallen soldier lay his spear, an olive wood shaft as tall as Kana and tipped with a teardrop-shaped copper blade, honed to a deadly point. Kana picked it up before the soldier could reach it and plunged it into his neck, giving him a quicker death than he had Melthior.

Kana took his shield and spear for disguise as well as protection, and headed toward the western gate. The gate was mostly deserted and dark, lit only by two lamps on either side and guarded by two soldiers, one archer atop the wall and a guard beside the two large wooden doors. With the noises of battle far off, Kana loped silently toward the lone guard, the spear balanced in his hand above his shoulder. The guard looked up to see Kana closing on him.

Before he could yell out, the spear that Kana sent his way pierced his throat and pinned him to the left-side door with a thunk.

The lookout called down to see what was going on, and Kana realized that the tip of the spear impaling the guard’s neck was buried in the door. As the dying guard bled and flailed around helplessly, Kana smashed him over the head with his shield to silence him. The lookout began to run down one of the staircases flanking the gate. Kana had helped build this wall, so he knew how quickly one could run down the steps. He nearly had the spear free from the door when he saw the lookout nock an arrow on his bow and shoot. Kana caught the arrow in his shield and then freed the spear from the wood door. The shaft was still stuck in the guard’s neck, however, and his dead weight pulled Kana and the spear toward the ground with him. The lookout now came at Kana with his stone mace, but Kana pulled the spear free just in time to thrust, stabbing the lookout in the thigh. Hobbled, the lookout screamed and fell back in agony. Then Kana finished him off.

The heavy wooden bar sat within four copper brackets across two large doors that opened inward. Kana pulled and pushed on the bar and saw that, though he could never lift it, he could move it. He started to push it sideways along its brackets until the other end ran into the wall’s opening and his end cleared the first bracket.

He stopped to look at it in the dim lamplight and noticed behind him two slight boys with copper collars around their necks. “Help me!” he shouted. One of the boys stared at him and the two dead soldiers in shock for a moment and then took off running.

The other hesitated, then ran over to Kana. “Hurry,” the boy whispered, pushing on the wooden bar.

Kana ran over and pushed up on the far end of the bar, and told the boy to push down on the other end. With his help, Kana maneuvered the other end down between the two brackets of the left-side door. The higher he managed to lift his end, the easier it got, until the bar was clear of the right-side door.

He and the boy pulled as hard as they could on the wooden door and managed to get it open enough for them to slip through. Kana went through first and could see nothing in the darkness but a deserted road and fields of barley. He turned back and motioned for the boy to come through, but the boy only stood on the other side, looking out.

“Come on!” cried Kana.

The boy shook his head and ran off in the direction the other boy had gone. Kana stared back in disbelief, then fled into the fields, far from the walls of the city, into the dwindling light of the horizon.

He circled south toward the river then turned back to see people leaking out of the now wide-open western gate and Narmer’s troops rushing toward the fresh hole in the city’s defenses. Kana ran and he did not stop. The fields of grain hid him well, not that anyone looked. It was nearly the time of harvest, and the barley was at its highest, the irrigation canals almost dry—the city had not seen rain in months. Kana ran until he was out of sight from even the keenest lookout on the southern wall. Though he had grown strong from years of hard labor, he had not run so far, for so long, in years, and as he mounted a steep ridge near the river, he felt a stitch in his side, his breaths coming rapidly and with great effort. Still he did not pause.

Finally Kana stopped at the sound of thunder. A violent crack followed by a low rumbling. Atop the ridge he turned to see the dome of the temple fall in on itself, extinguishing the fire and sending up a plume of smoke, dust, and debris where the half-circle of the nearly finished dome stood a moment before outlined against the sky.

He was far away now, and the city looked small as fires burned everywhere. Kana knew what soldiers did to the people of a sacked city and mourned only one of them. From this distance, the city was just a bend in the river brushed by flames that would soon die, a city that would return in time to nothing more than dirt and gravel.

He turned his back on it all and headed downhill, following the river upstream. Ahead of him a leopardess crouched on the banks of the river to drink and turned to face him, stopping him in his tracks. Her eyes glowed like small fires in the half-light. Then she blinked, turned, and bounded off into the bush. Kana, his lips parted, watched her go but did not make a sound.

III

In the hours before dawn, Kana came across the downed trunk of an old palm tree and fashioned a raft out of it. With the river’s level low after months of drought, he was able to use his spear to pole and paddle himself across to the other side.

Although the land looked different than it had during the rainy season, Kana had no trouble finding his way back home. He didn’t have his bow and arrows, so he had to rely on whatever food he could gather, though his spear proved useful for hunting larger game. When he tracked a herd of giraffes from their spoor, he smeared his weapon with the boiled sap of a desert rose and speared one of the young ones as it fled. After following it for miles, the poison finally brought it down. Kana left most of the animal’s uneaten carcass for scavengers but took the giraffe’s neck ligament to use for a bowstring. With the blade of his spear he carved a bow from the branch of a mutateko tree, and after sharpening a handful of arrows, he nocked one on his bow and pulled back the string, satisfied he could hit whatever he aimed at. He broke off the shaft of his spear to make it easier to use as a knife or hatchet, and used it to break the latch of his collar and remove it forever. He traded his filthy loincloth for hides, and headed home, barely noticing the terrain he’d marveled at seven years before.

When he crossed over the mountains that formed the northern border of his people’s lands and arrived in the valley one afternoon, a question that once would never have occurred to him entered his mind: What if they have changed? The thought never would have occurred to anyone in his group because the people who lived on these lands had never known change. But that didn’t mean change wouldn’t come. They didn’t know war. They didn’t know about cities or about masters and slaves or about kings and palaces and torture cells. But they could. Kana did.

He came to the top of a mesa, its steep face covered with whistling thorn. He remembered this hunting ground well. Most avoided it because the long thorns of the trees not only pricked but caused a fatal sickness in some. Hungry, Kana climbed down the slope, careful to avoid the trees’ spikes. Screened from the watering hole below, Kana could spy on any prey that came along to drink or to feed on the poisonous trees’ edible seed pods.

Before long, a family of dik-diks approached. Kana pulled an arrow out of his quiver and was about to rise when he heard the sound of a twig snapping nearby. One of the dik-diks looked up but saw nothing. It went back to drinking, and Kana saw a form rise up from the bush, his legs forming an X, an arrow nocked on his bow as he pulled the string back. Mahlu, Kana’s cousin, let his arrow go.

Although not a perfect shot, Mahlu managed to hit one of the dik-diks in the haunch. Kana almost rose up and called to his cousin but stopped himself, instead watching as Mahlu pursued the crippled animal. A young woman followed Mahlu. Salesi, only an adolescent when Kana left, was now grown and Mahlu’s companion.

As he watched Salesi and Mahlu gather up the dik-dik, Kana kept himself hidden. Faced at last with his own people, he suddenly dreaded being discovered. From where he crouched, Mahlu and Salesi looked older but otherwise unchanged. Relief washed over him. But as much as he wanted to run to them, fear froze him in place: fear of the contamination he’d brought with him, more poisonous than the whistling thorn. Kana was changed, and he could never un-know what he knew. And yet he owned a fierce pride in the knowledge he’d won by hard experience. As his cousin and Salesi carried their prize back to camp, Kana wept. He understood, finally, that he could never go back there again.

* * *

Nearing dark, in the foothills to the north, Kana turned and surveyed the lands on which he’d been raised, that once comprised his entire world. They looked small. They looked raw and unfinished. And, he told himself, they had nothing new to show him.

 There was no city to return to, even if he’d wanted. Further north were the lands of Narmer and the same sort of people he’d fled. The sun was slowly heading west. For now, Kana would do the same.

About the author

Alex Lubertozzi has been a writer and editor since the late 1900s and has coauthored two works of nonfiction, The Complete War of the Worlds (2001) and World War II on the Air (2003). He has written for numerous books and magazines and had his short fiction published in The Arcanist. Alex has been composing fiction for most of his life (if you count lying) and published his first novel, Any Other World Will Do, in 2021. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and son. You can find him occasionally on Mastodon: @alexlubertozzi@mastodon.social

About the illustration

The illustration is "Hadzabe hunter standing in front of his house" by Erasmus Kamugisha, 2022. Licensed under the Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.