9. VOLCANO

OWONGO AND A PRINCE

9. VOLCANO

Owongo and Mirumda were in the middle of the most gorgeous cuddle when there came a horrendous and shattering noise thay seemed to shake the very fabric of their cave It was a noise the like of which had only been told of in old legends when it was said a mountain the other side of the nearest mountains that lined their side of the valley had blown itself to smithereens. Indeed, it was rumour that it was from that devastation that their forefathers countless generations earlier (not that they understood words like generations or even countless) had come, seeking a safe land to live in, a new place for their children to grow in, and they had found the valley they now lived in.

And now the world rocked and even Owongo and Mirumda rocked with it, as the noise continued. The usual black of night was even lit up by flames flickering in the slies.

“Is bad,” muttered Owongo, “maybe mountain has fallen again like in the oldest of the old stories?”

“Maybe,” agreed Mirumda, “but lie still, Owongo, we were planting the seed for more ankle biters and we can’t let a silly old mountain in the next valley interfere with it.”

Mirumda had it firmly fixed in her mind that the games they enjoyed playing under the cover of black night had to do with the creation of children, and nothing would shake her, not even Owongo when he said she was daft.

Next day, when their antics were finally over and Owongo had proved to the lovely Mirumda that she was truly the most lovely of all females in any valley, they were able to get some idea of what had caused the violent interruption during the night.

The air stank of strange things that had been burning, and a pall of smoke lay in the air the other side of their own mountain range. Owongo shook his head in disbelief.

“It is good that we were here and not there,” he observed, “but there are people over there, poor people who will have been killed by what we could only hear rather than see or feel. And, if the old stories told by our oldsters are true, then those people are our kin, for it is told that our own ancestors had to run for their lives, leaving all their things behind them, leaving skins and other stuff that they owned, and came here from danger, settling here and living their lives in peace and comfort, until even we were born.”

He had barely stopped remembering the old folk tales when a loud shout from his cave entrance made him jump.

“As if loud bangs in the night disturbing our antics wasn’t enough, he moaned, “we have to have that dreadful Prince waking us after so broken a night.”

And it was Prince Dickory, and Owongo leaped out from his snuggling position underneath his skins and shouted out, “Prince Dickory, haven’t we had enough cause to sleep on without you shouting until we are deaf!”

“But did you not hear, during the black hours of a wretched night how history has been repeated?” demanded Prince. Please note, he would never have used the word history, but whatever he actually did say would have meant very much the same.

“I heard, and need to sleep, for Mirumda and I lost much sleep,” Owongo almost snarled.

“Ha!” snorted Prince Dickory, “then don’t you see what this means?”

“It means that I’m weary,” rejoined Owongo.

“Then you are not thinking thoughts like a leader should,” grated Prince Dickory, “it means there are going to be hoards of people forced from their homes, maybe, with family members scorched to ash, and they will be coming this way! They will climb down our mountain, they will slide down this side and they will take our homes! They will take all the spells that the witchdoctor can make, they will hunt in our hunting fields until there is nothing left to hunt., and they will move into our caves the moment we are not looking!”

“But, sighed Owongo, “are they not out kin?”

“Bah! So you believe that old story, do you?” Sneered Prince Dickory, “we, Wongo, have always been here, since the sun shone down on the very first day, and are still here today, and they are going to steal that from us! I say they should be destroyed if they come anywhere near us! And that, Wongo, is what any man fit to be a leader should be telling the people!”

“So,” said Owongo quietly, “they are the dispossessed” (though I doubt he used that actual word) “and we should offer them nothing but death should they come looking for help?”

“Bah!” repeated Prince Dickory, “that is your weakness, Wongo! You should care for your kin and not wild people from the other side of the mountain!”

Owongo. Shook his head. “If there is any truth in the old stories, then they are my kin,” he said, “and by the way, my name is Owongo!”

“Bah!” sneered Prince Dickory for the third time, and he stalked off.

By the time he was out of sight, cursing all the way by the sound of the guttural croaks he came out with, a small group had gathered by the open entrance to Owongo’s home, and a muttered debate was soon well under way.

“We must watch out as Prince Dickory says,” muttered one, and “The poor people, losing everything they could call their own,” murmured another, and “they will come over the mountain in their thousands, and they will carry weapons with them and they will slaughter us in out sleep!” declared a third.

This last assumption angered Owongo. He scowled at the man who had uttered it and told him, quite bluntly, “they will have no weapons to slaughter any of us with, for they will have lost everything, even some of them will have seen their offspring perish as the flames from the mountain consumed them. They will be totally and utterly eaten by fear and dread and loss.”

“Then they can keep away from me,” replied the other, one Owongo recognised as being a friend of Prince Dickory.

“If I were to lose everything I have I would want a fellow woman to lend me whatever help she could,” sighed a woman, a friend of Mirumda, a person who spent many an hour in the company of the woman he loved when he was out in the field, hunting.

“You speak well, Rose,” put in Mirumda, (though I doubt the woman’s name was actually Rose, but she was so sweet she must have had some sort of pretty floral name, or so thought Owongo.)

Just then a shouted call from Prince Dickory alerted them.

“Here come the swines!” he yelled, “look: down the mountain, a dread host!”

They all looked.

A small boy, not yet fully formed for manhood, was weeping as he slipped and slithered towards them down the mountain.

“Help me!” he called out, his words being clear though he had an odd, to his listeners accent. “I am Brava, and I am hurt!”

“We are besieged!” ranted Prince Dickory, and picked up a jagged rock and slung it towards the boy.

© Dorothy and Peter Rogerson.10.11.23