Child Thief.
The afternoon sun drenched the world in the light of its noonday fire. The young woman lowered her head and shielded her eyes from the sun with the palm of her hand as she made her way. There was no escaping glare of the midday sun as it beat mercilessly from above. Swirling pillars of hot air swept through the busy streets of the market, whipping dust and sand into the bustling crowd of people, stinging their eyes and skin.
The young woman muttered under her breath, cursing the old gods as she hurried on. Gods who had grown too senile to govern the world anymore. Wicked gods, drunk and obese from filling their bellies with the misery of man. Gods who were once beautiful, but were now ogres and hags, driven only by their thirst for man’s suffering, blind to the needs of a world struggling under the weight of their existence.
She cursed them for their rulership over their children, the Sisters, the Old Mothers, who sent others like her into the world to do terrible things as she had just done. Greedy, blasted spirits! And their mother, the so called Great Spirit, who spit them out of her womb and turned her back on them to save herself from their madness. She cursed the Great Spirit too, for leaving the earth and her children to the mercy of the beasts she gave birth to.
She let out a breath and swept her frustration aside so she could focus on her escape. Her hurried footfalls sent sand spraying onto the sandaled feet of other passersby as she hurried on, oblivious of their irritation, making her way swiftly through the winding narrow market streets leading to Kali’s gates. She draped a long scarf as a hood over her head and wrapped its end over her mouth, concealing most of her face. Sweat trickled down her neck and back. She shifted her aching shoulders and adjusted her robe as she held the sleeping child hidden in the sling of cloth hanging around her neck and shoulders under her robes.
Sudden gusts of hot wind swept sand onto her skin and into her eyes, buffeting her as she swept by market stalls surrounded by haggling customers. It seemed the whole world was here to buy all that Kali’s central market had to offer. She tried hard to listen for the cries of the infant’s mother trailing behind her as she pushed her way past man and beast at the farmer’s quarter of the market. Even if she couldn’t hear her now, she knew the mother could not be far behind. Her heart was racing.
Her mind played tricks on her in her growing panic. In one instant she heard the cries and screams of the child’s mother gaining ground in pursuit of her, cutting through the throngs of people like a blade through a cornfield and in another she heard nothing but the noise of the crowded market. She gritted her teeth and fought her growing panic. She bowed her head and murmured apologies when she was met with harsh looks, exclamations of surprise or startled cries as she pushed roughly through the throngs of traders and travelers.
She reached the edge of the city, the great pillars of Kali’s gates coming into her field of vision. Her scarf darkened from perspiration on her forehead, chest, and neck. She tasted the sweat dripping off her nose as it splashed onto her lips. Her skin itched from the rivulets rolling down the valley between her shoulder blades to the small of her back and down her neck, moistening the sling carrying the child. She cursed the heat, cursed the press of the throng and yearned for the crisp coolness of the desert’s night. She winced at the sting from the prickling heat rash which had broken out near her armpits and fought the urge to scratch herself.
The child stirred in her drugged sleep. She glanced down anxiously at her chest. The child was heavy. Her back ached. She pleaded with the god called Fate and hoped that she hadn’t given the child more of the oil than she should have. She remembered an infant one of the sisters had carried pressed to her breast for almost an entire night only to pull its lifeless body away from her chest when she arrived at the house. As the young woman neared Kali’s gates, her eyes darted left and right in search of any sign of the first caravans leaving Kali for the east.
The pillars of Kali’s gates loomed ahead of her. She headed quickly towards them, joining herself with the stream of travelers headed in the same direction. She was almost through the gates when a large hand clasped around her right arm, jerking her away from the flowing crowd. She snapped around. The child hidden beneath her robes had nearly fallen out of the sling around her neck! She thrust her hands underneath the cloth and hurriedly adjusted the sling.
“What do you have there, hidden under your robes?” came a boom of a voice.
She looked up into piercing brown eyes a handspan above her head. A muscled, dark-skinned guard loomed over her. His index finger pointed at the mound she held protectively against her chest.
“What is this you have covered?” the man asked again, nodding at the mound. Other travelers hurried by, many grateful to the gods for distracting the guards while they slipped away unnoticed.
The young woman feigned a poor understanding of the language to dampen the guard’s interest.
“Home. Return,” she said slowly.
“I want to see,” he said, pointing at her chest. She feigned surprise at his insistence.
“Sizwe, can’t you see she’s carrying her child? Can’t you see it? She’s probably in a hurry to return to her caravan to attend to the child before it wakes. You know how it is with the dust and the stampede for the gates at the end of busy days like this,” said another guard as she pulled the cloth away to slightly reveal a sleeping girl child.
“Why does the child have skin so much darker than hers?” The tall man turned a thick neck in the direction of the guard looking on from a few paces behind him.
“Eh, what do you mean? Let me see,” the guard said, coming over and parting the cloth to see the brown skin of the child. Their eyes met and for an instant, the man glimpsed a look of fear on the face of the young woman, barely noticeable before she replaced it with the best look of outrage she could muster.
“The young woman´s skin is dark enough. The child probably takes after her father. Nothing strange in this,” the guard said dismissively.
Sizwe, unconvinced, pressed the young woman further. “How come your child’s skin is so much darker than yours, eh? You Northerners are not known to marry from other tribes.”
“Mine,” she said defiantly, locking her eyes on the two men.
The young woman’s heart was beating faster than a set of drums at a New Yam festival. She had to do something. Now! The two men shifted their weight from one foot to another, waiting for a response from her, the look in their eyes hardening with each moment she stubbornly held their gaze. She fought to keep her breathing calm. From a long distance away, she thought she heard a shout. Sweat began to break all over her. Was the mother already that close? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a third guard approaching them. The child stretched in her sleep.
Suddenly, the young woman thrust her left palm into the folds of cloth tied around her bosom, forcing out her breast. The two men’s eyes sprang from their sockets as she pushed her nipple into the child’s parted lips. Her heart soared as the child let out a small sharp cry from her sleep, reached her small hands hungrily around the young woman’s breast and closed her fingers around it. She remained asleep though, her full cheeks puffing as she drew milk.
The young woman threw her robes over the child and glared at the men with defiant eyes. Bless that vile old hag at the coven for her herbs that gave me a mother’s body.
She adjusted her robes and marched between the blushing pair of guards toward the gate. Sizwe, the bigger of the two men, reached for her shoulder. “Wait,” he growled, but the young woman could sense his shame. Stiffly she shrugged his hand off and headed into the flowing stream of people.
Suddenly a huge gust of wind whipped up a cloud of sand and dust, turning into a mini cyclone, a dust devil. Dust and sharp grains of sand whipped into the throng of passersby, grazing skin and stinging eyes. Usually, dust devils lasted no longer than a brief moment before dissipating into the hot desert air, but this one seemed to take on a life of its own. It lashed dust and sand against everything around it long enough to throw confusion into the throng of guards and travelers at the gate. Palms were cupped over eyes and cloth draped over heads to shield against the assault. When the small cyclone had dissipated and the guards could take in their surroundings, the young woman was gone.
“Sizwe, Buhle, what was all that about just now with the Northern woman?” An older guard came walking toward them, wiping dust off his face with a pad of woolen cloth. “Why were you questioning her so?”
“It was nothing,” the big man answered. “Just a strange feeling, that’s all.”
“Yes, just a feeling. She was a young woman of course,” Buhle sneered. “You haven’t been that careful around any male passersby today,” the man sneered. The older guard laughed.
“At least focus on those not carrying milk,” Buhle said, chuckling.
The big man almost visibly reddened as the others roared with laughter. The older guard tapped both men on their shoulders. “It’s almost time for the evening watch. Let’s pass the rest of our time in this sweltering heat without incident, eh, Sizwe? Buhle?”
“Of course, Baba, of course.” Both men smiled as they took to their posts.
Suddenly they heard sounds of a commotion from a long distance away from the gate. All three men gazed at the horizon and saw a large group of people more than five hundred paces away hurriedly heading towards them.
“So much for an incident-free close to the afternoon,” the older man sighed.