MEDICINE by Susquehannock ( copyright 2013 by r.susquehannock@gmail.com )
The wailing of women was the first human sound that cut through the thick shrouding forest.
A hundred painful steps before, the monkeys and parrots had gone quiet. Now JaguarTookFoot knew what made them pause their endless chatter. The humans were agitated, nothing in this forest was safe.
Especially not JaguarTookFoot.
He began to sing – loud. First a series of low hoots, deep from the chest. Then high calls – KEE KEE KEE. Low hoots again. Deep, like howler monkey who knows how to make himself heard thru muffling trees, but hoots no hunter could mistake for howler.
Then the song for humans. “I am JaguarTookFoot! I am Medicine! I was called here by third son of KnowsTurtles! JaguarTookFoot is here! JaguarTookFoot is my name!”.
He kept singing the song. His foot hurt. The boy had shown up at the village of his hosts at midmorning, it was now nearly the time for the daily rain, only doctors and warriors and crazy women walked thru the jungle in the hottest of the day. He felt bad, thirsty, hot, in pain – but he did not want to die today.
“You slur like a prisoner with a split tonge.”, a harsh male voice called from before him.
JaguarTookFoot sighed a deep sigh of relief. His hands flew up and cupped. “Thank you Forest!”. For the moment, he would live. If the warriors had decided better safe than sorry, the war chief would not have alerted him with an insult.
Leaves rustled behind him. Some young killer was letting him know, “Go ahead, run, stranger, I would be happy to cut that tongue…”.
“I am Medicine”, JaguarTookFoot said to the forest. “I was told I would be paid well to come to this village and heal two warriors, sons of chiefs.”.
“Or, you are a spy.”, said the voice before him.
A bow’s string was tapped somewhere behind. It hummed.
JaguarTookFoot slowly opened his medicine bag, and lifted out his most precious medicine. It glowed softly in the forest light. He held it up by it’s end, high enough for all those watching to see, and turned it to place it in the proper position for use.
The grunt from the war chief was loud. The relief in it was unmistakeable. Suddenly, as if released from bonds, the forest around him rustled with human sounds.
By magic, suddenly the war chief was visible, standing in the path. One hand held a war club back and low, deadly. The other hand raised, fingers flickering in war codes. His lips pursed and frog calls pierced the air. The rustling stopped instantly, then, was replaced by the nearly inaudible sounds of killers moving away.
JaguarTookFoot was in the middle of a war. He very carefully put the medicine tool back in it’s birdskin pouch, lined with feathers to keep it safe.
Then, as it had every day since the beginning of time, the daily rain started – and washed out the sounds, even the wails of the women grieving in the village 300 paces away.
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An old warrior, his face a mass of scars with only a third finger and thumb remaining on his right hand to hold a toothed club, and a young warrior with a bow, nocked with an arrow tipped with a stingray spine showing the sticky tar of poison, “guided” him to the open clay plaza of the village.
It was a common village of the forest people, a bare clay oval surrounded on three sides by long houses with open faces, many smoking fires to keep away the flies, the big eyes of children gleaming in the dimness of the reed and stave roofed houses. The hammocks were empty, only old men and many women and children could be seen, tho most were half hidden, under woven mats, behind posts, staring. Counting the children in his mind, and not on his fingers, he realized that this village was if anything even richer than the boy messenger had said.
The two biggest houses at the end of the village were where the women gathered. Most had stopped wailing, now that he was in the village – seeing a stranger, especially someone as strange as JaguarTookFoot, was unusual enough that it warranted a pause of the ceremonial distress. From others invisible behind the crowd, wailing went on – mixed with something worse, some deeper throat-tearing sound of personal agony.
There was a movement in the crowd of women. Older women pushed and scolded and barked.
First, the women separated into their clans – and opened a space so that JaguarTookFoot could see deeper into the big houses.
Then, the youngest girls of each clan were pushed to the front.
JaguarTookFoot could smell young pussy from where he stood, still 30 paces away. The girls had been made ready, washed, painted with fertility dreamsigns, wearing each family’s brideprice beads and feathers and valuable medicines and prizes. Some, the very prettiest, flashed golden sparks in the sun, proof of rare gold. Breasts were full, nipples proudly displayed and darkened to simulate prior breastfeeding, and pubic hair carefully tweezed to neat small patches showing off cleft. The tribe had prepared all the unmarried girls who had bled, as if for a chiefs wedding.
JaguarTookFoot’s cock started to swell under his loincloth. Because he had medicine, he rarely had to go a day without a willing woman, but even for a man of power like himself, this was a sight to make his ancestors eager, to make them want to open young legs and tear the spirit veils that kept the ancestors from pouring out those tweezed bare clefts. The girls, lined up on display, staring at him with wide eyes, gleaming out of sockets darkened with charcoal.
A series of particularly loud shrieks broke the moment, and, at that signal, older women shooed the marriageable girls to the back, surrounding them with a wall of experience and tribal authority.
Out of the house shambled an older woman, bright red and black with sticky blood in various stages of drying and clotting, but wearing feathers of extreme value and power, brilliant blue and red and yellow – and now bloodied as well, an amazing waste of wealth.
She stared at JaguarTookFoot, and screamed again – a mother’s wail to drive away spirits and ancestors. She showed him what she held in her hand – the jaw of a fish known for its terrible needlelike teeth – then scraped it down the one unbloodied spot left on her body, her left breast, still fat, not the droop of a woman completely incapable of nursing. The blood nearly sprayed from the lines she scored on her tit, drops running down, and falling off her nipple like red milk.
“You are the doctor.”, she said. “The one with the half foot.”. It might have been an accusation.
“Yes, I am. I am JaguarTookFoot.”.
“Let me see.”, she said. She motioned. Suddenly his two “guides” were right beside him, and the old one put the toothed club against his ass. He accepted the guidance and walked up to the old woman. As he got within striking distance the old warrior grabbed his loincloth to stop him, and the young moved to a position where he could put the poisoned arrow efficiently into the doctor with a twitch of his hand, if needed. But, he was very careful not to get in the way of the woman, he did not even look her way.
The woman stepped closer on her own, and looked down at JaguarTookFoot’s famous deformity. He lifted it to show her.
Her eyes gleamed, and she screamed again, louder than ever before, ear shattering at this closeness, but now the scream held another emotion.
Hope.
“Show me the medicine.”, she said, but now with a rushed urgency. She turned to the side, and said something, a name – hard to make out – she was calling somebody. “People say you have it, show it me. I must see it, my sister must see it”.
Out of the other house a group of women came, one nearly carried by the others, also covered in blood, still gripping hard in each hand sharpened clam shells, with strips of skin hanging off her arms and legs.
She was not well. Vomit flecked her chin, her eyes did not track. If the other women had let go, she clearly would have fallen. As she felt the reddening evening sun hit her, she seemed to come back to life a bit. When she did, and saw JaguarTookFoot, she vomited again thinly, and dropped the sharpened shells.
The first woman jumped to her, grabbed a shell, and put it back in her hand. She motioned another woman to help her hold it. “NOT A SPIRIT”, she shouted into her sisters face. “This is a man, the man with the half foot, the man from far away, the man with medicine that can save our sons!”. She grabbed her chin, made her look. “NOT A SPIRIT! SEE! NOT A SPIRIT! It’s the man with the half foot! The Jaguar man!”. She hauled back her hand, made a fist, and punched the weaker woman in the chest. “NOW CRY FOR MY NEPHEW YOU USELESS BITCH!”.
Something in the sick woman’s eyes came back to life, and she shrieked, blowing spit and snot and vomit and blood into her sisters face. The first woman, clearly dominant, nodded and clapped in approval.
“SHOW ME IT!”, she shouted, not even looking at JaguarTookFoot. “SHOW MY SISTER!”. She glared into her sister’s eyes like a snake looking at a bird, but motioned like a queen.
The old warrior pushed the teeth on the club into JaguarTookFoots ass cheek.
JaguarTookFoot rushed and fumbled a bit as he opened his medicine bag and took out the birdskin pouch. He steadied himself as he pulled out the powerful tool. He held it out, showing. Even redder sunlight made it shine in a color never seen in the jungle – alien, strange, impossible. Like the gold found in nuggets in the streams, but not like it. Like a bone, maybe, or a feather – but not those things either. Such a thing could not exist.
The sick woman saw it first. She blinked. Then the powerful woman turned and looked. Her eyes bugged out a bit – then she threw her hands up to the sky, cupped her palms, and screamed and screamed and screamed until she fell to her knees, coughing, gagging for breath.
The screams of a mother who knew her child was dead, was already a spirit, but now might, just might, live.
“My son’s son’s third son, what did he tell you?”, she said, talking to the clay, her voice rough with screaming.
“Four wives for each, with as much vine as each wife could carry. I choose the wives”, JaguarTookFoot said quietly.
The old woman nodded. “That is what I said.”.
“Their bride goods too?”.
She nodded.
“It may not work. You may have called me too late. What if they die?”.
She looked up with death in her eyes. He saw her, in his minds eye, peeling the skin from his body, bit by bit, day after day, doing things to him that only a woman would do to a man.
“One wife each, with all the vine they can carry. I told the boy.”.
“Yes. And now I have heard it from you. Tell me your names”.
JaguarTookFoot could smell danger. The woman stunk of fury. The smell of warriors and killers was everywhere. The young girls smelled of excitement and wet pussy. The sick woman smelled of slow death before many more rains. Only honor would keep him alive if he was too late.
“Yours and hers. In front of everyone. Or I will not do medicine, and everyone will know you killed the Jaguar Man for no good reason.”.
This woman had seen many things in her life, and had ruled this part of the forest longer than many. She had not done this by not being able to see the way of things, the best chance the forest offered. A new light was in her eyes, satisfaction. She liked a man who was not a fool.
“I am StickForYams”, she said, loudly, making her name ring off the clay. “My sister is LooksGoodCarrying. I will not kill you, JaguarTookFoot!”. She used his name carefully, correctly, proving she also had power over him. “Now do medicine! You have names, the ancestors know what we do here!”.
JaguarTookFoot raised his hands to the forest, and cupped his palms. It was getting dark.
“I need light, fat light, as many wicks as you have. I need boiled water. And I need ten of your strong warriors. The forest says there is no time left, let me see them.”.
The old woman shouted. Painted men appeared out of nowhere – JaguarTookFoot had smelled them, but still, the sight of the weapons made his knees stiffen.
“Tell the women to go away. One house away at least. All except your clan.” Another shout, and the women scattered.
“Show me your sons, Bring the fat lights. Have your clan hold the wicks high.”.
It was as the boy had said. Two men, young but old enough to have grown sons. Their heads had been bashed with stone warclubs. One was still and unconscious, but breathing, one moaning and with shaking hands and feet, one eye shut, one eye filled with desperate bravery.
JaguarTookFoot was in his element now. War wounds were something he had treated many times. These men might live. The round stone balls on a warclub produced a wound he understood.
“Him first. Hold him down hard. You two – hold his head exactly as I show you. Now, wheres my boiled water!”.
From the medicine bag, soft skins dipped in water wiped away blood, exposing the wound. Freshly knapped obsidian blades cut the skin perfectly, in economic strokes. The broken-headed warrior screamed as his scalp was pulled off. Working thru the blood, with hawk talon picks, JaguarTookFoot pulled out the loose chips of bone. Time for the medicine only he possesed in this forest.
The copper trepanning tool, hardened by hammerstones and given rare and precious sawteeth in a place far away, made a grinding sound as he he worked it’s teeth against the gleaming skullbone, carefully sawing the depressed skull portion away. The wounded man panted.
The other flattened end of the copper tool, that magic thing made of material the forest never saw, fit into the sawn slot and levered away misshaped skullbone. Pink grey fatty stuff was underneath. JaguarTookFoot washed it very carefully. It was bruised, he saw, but should recover. Thank the forest.
He pinned the scalp back in place with a thorn. He would use the ants on it later, this would do for now.
The warriors holding the wounded man down looked like they were seeing ghosts.
“Now him.”, JaguarTookFoot said. He could feel it. He would save both of them.
AUTONGNOTHIS 