There was once a village, a tiny village that didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. In this village lived about fifty humanoids, most of them related to one another, possibly in more ways than can be achieved without inbreeding. No one knows when the group first settled there, along the Munsami river, deep in the heart of the dark jungle. Even the villagers themselves can't tell you. If asked, they will say that they have always been there, planted with roots like the tall thick trees that tower into the sky and spread darkness over thick undergrowth.
On one particular day the village was astir with whispers. Sacrifices to the river gods must be made soon. A small boy has gone missing. In the jungle that surrounds the village live the big cats and the foliage is so thick it would take only a moment to get lost in it. The villagers are not worried about the jungle. They are worried about the river. In the river live the giant crocodiles and anacondas. These mighty creatures have grown large and fat for lack of predators. The villagers are not worried about them. There is something more sinister lurking in the river.
Petari is sobbing little strangled sobs in her hut that can be heard throughout the village. She is grieving for the child she has lost and the one she is about to lose. It's tradition, you see, to sacrifice a second child from a family recently bereaved. Petari has four children. She had four children, now she only has three. By tomorrow she will only have two children left. The old women in the village try to encourage her by pointing out that two remain. It doesn't change anything. The old women don't seem to mind her crying. "It is better that one woman grieves than two." So they say. Take the sacrifice from the family already grieving, so that nobody else need feel the same pain.
Petari would try to hide her child, but there was no opportunity. Her husbands prevent her. Petari has three husbands in the village. If you can call them that, because there is no marriage. There is only the partnership of humanity and once that partnership produces a child, that man is joined to her in a bond of parenthood that connects them.
The husbands guard her to make sure she doesn't try to rescue the sacrifice. Two of them eye the third warily. He is the father of the sacrifice. He might be overcome and try to save him. The third husband Fallah is a thin man with a weathered face. If he feels anything for his son, he hides it well. For now.
Darkness approaches and the villagers gather together and build a fire. A very big fire. There is a feast and dancing to celebrate the river. Many rituals are performed to please the god of the river. Late in the evening Petari is brought out of her hut and made to pray to the river god for peace. The villagers believe she must have angered the river god in some way so she must beg him for peace and give him another one of her children as an offering. She belabors the prayer and draws it out as long as possible. She begs the river god to return her first lost child so she won't have to sacrifice another.
At last the husbands bring the second child to the gathering. He is small but old enough to understand speech. The husbands present him to the elders of the village. At this the woman's shrieks increase to almost hysterical levels. It takes all three husbands to contain her as she tries to reach for her child.
A man with a torch comes to him and leans down to whisper something in his ear. The small boy listens and shakes his head vigorously. A bit more whispering occurs. At last the boy appears to understand. He gathers up the edges of his long brown robe and prepares to run. The man touches the edge of the torch to the young boy's clothing and pandemonium breaks loose. The boy is running toward the river while the villagers all scream at him simultaneously. They are all screaming for him to run. Oh child, just make it to the river before there is much pain.
He runs as fast as his small legs will carry him. It isn't far. His mother is right behind him, she has torn herself away from her husbands and she will be there at the edge of the river when he arrives. The fire is hot on his tail now. He can feel it touching his back and the scream rips from his lips. He runs faster. The river is just there. He throws himself into the water. Suddenly the pain subsides, but now he has a different problem. The current is strong and even though he can swim, he isn't strong enough to win this battle.
He slips past his mother's desperate snatching arms and she shrieks despair. He is rolling now, tumbling down the river. He manages to catch a few desperate breaths here and there as he is pulled this way and that. He is terrified and unable to figure out which way is up or down as he is carried down the river.
He is suddenly lifted out of the water by the back of his robe. There is his father above him, leaning down over the river on a fallen tree. A glimmer of love crosses the hardened face and the boy clings to his father as he scrambles back up to safety. Soon he is in his mother's arms. The village will celebrate again. There will be yet another feast. This feast will honor the river god for kindly returning the boy and all will be well, for the river god is pacified. Of course, this feast would still have happened even if the boy had drowned. Either way, the river god is pacified and the village will be safe for the summer months.
The hottest part of the year, the three months of June, July and August. These months are the most dangerous out of all twelve. Not even the rainy season or wild animals claim as many villagers as is lost to the river in summer.
I came to the village three days after the little boy got burned. It took me two weeks to get there from the coast. I barely made it alive, but that is another story.
I'd just finished medical school and was hankering for some kind of adventure to counterbalance the tedium of book study. I had several job offers lined up but after three months I hadn't come around to making my choice. I dropped by my former professor's office and we had a bit of a chat. I tried explaining my problem by talking about one job and then the other and another until he stopped me with an upraised hand. "Casey, there's nothing wrong with any of these jobs. The problem is with you. You don't want to settle down yet."
He was right of course. He usually is. "Why don't you take some time away. Don't make a decision about a job right now. I'm sending a team of researchers upriver in a week. Why don't you go along? You could take medicines with you and treat ailments in the villages along the way. Maybe you'd get interested in what my researchers are working on."
I won't lie, I turned my nose up at first. I think I'd imagined something a bit more exciting for my first adventure. Maybe helping victims of a hurricane or plague. Maybe patching up men on the battle field.
The problem was, we're a bit short on hurricanes, plagues and battle fields right now. That's certainly a funny thing to say but it's true. There are years where we have more than one major disaster happening simultaneously, and then there are years like this one where not much happens at all. Almost feels eery. Like when the tide goes out before a tsunami. Something bad will happen soon.
He must have seen the skepticism in my face because he came around his desk and sat on the edge facing me. "I get it. You're not ready to settle down at one job, but you have to do something. This would make an excellent marker on your resume."
Since we were waiting for something bad to happen, I had no choice but to take medicine to the villages.
I did that.
It was a long journey along the wide river that narrowed drastically as we got inland. We passed through countless villages and I got to do what I'd been trained for. I didn't have much time for wishful thinking because there were teeth to pull and wounds to dress; fevers to break and medicines to give. The jungle has a way of making people sick. Especially those who are already susceptible from allergies and genetic deficiencies.
We stayed in the village just long enough to treat the ill and instruct the family members on how to continue caring for them. Then we moved on to the next village.
By the fourteenth day I'd gotten into a routine. I was starting to get comfortable and get a solid idea of what I'd likely face in the next village. Unfortunately I was not prepared for what I did find there.
When we first arrived it was chaos. The maps we followed only took us as far as the previous village and we didn't know this one was even here until we were right in the middle of it. A lot of yelling ensued and the villagers pointed sticks at us and made threats in a foreign language. Thankfully we had brought along a man from the last village who could speak with them. He explained, and one of the researchers who knew a bit of the dialect translated his words back to me.
"These people are from the sea. They have come to study the river and the jungle. They have come to learn your ways. They bring medicine for your sicknesses. They have good medicine."
The villagers whispered among themselves and then some of them ran away. The man tells us, "We wait."
The villagers return with a small boy. All arms and legs. So frail. The woman brings him to me and I can see that he is unconscious. He is covered in sweat and blisters. I ask through the translator what has happened to this boy.
He looks at me and says, "They did the ritual of fire to appease the river god." It took a few exchanges to get a picture of what happened. I was in too much shock to believe the story and I had to be assured that it was true. "So you're saying one boy drowns in the river so they light another boy on fire and send him in too?!"
"Yes, that is the way here. We must appease the anger of the river god by making sacrifices. We know the god is pleased when he returns our sacrifice. The summer will be safer for everyone."
"It doesn't make things safer. There is no river god. All you're doing is hurting another innocent boy." I was furious and I tried to reason with the man but it was no use. He just kept saying, "You're not one of us, you cannot understand why we do what we do."
Finally I gave up trying and started tending to the little boy. I had no idea how bad it was because he was wrapped in various cloths. Once I got the layers off I couldn't believe what I was seeing. His entire back was scorched and most of the skin was gone. I knew immediately that there wasn't anything I could do. It had already been three days since he'd been burned and the infection was far progressed. If he was to have any chance at survival he needed to go to a real hospital and it would take a miracle. If he even survived the trip.
The parents listened as I explained the gravity of the situation but they didn't seem convinced. I told them to put the child on a gurney and I would accompany them on the way back down to the city. I don't know why I suggested it because deep in my heart I knew he wouldn't make it. Fourteen days of travel in his condition. I guess I hoped maybe I could keep him alive with the medications. If I could just keep the infection under control, maybe he could survive.
Whispers broke out among the villagers. The translator tells me it is late, but they will take the child to the city tomorrow before the sun rises. For now we must rest. We are given a hut to rest in for the night and I sit there cross-legged on my unrolled sleeping bag reading my tablet. Then staring out into space, I wonder how it is that I've come so far only to turn around and go straight back the way I came. Some kind of adventure.
There is a high-pitched shriek that startles me and sends icy shivers through my body. We all rush out of the hut to find that the village is in action. Everyone is running to the river toward the unearthly sounds ripping through the night air. There is a crowd gathered at the edge of the river and I cannot see what it is at first. Then the crowd parts and I see a man carrying a child in his arms.
Disbelief. It is the father of the boy with the burned body. He is carrying his son. Tears are streaming down the angular face and he announces helplessly, "The river gods have taken him."
At this point I'm astonished, believing of course that the father has drowned his son intentionally. I feel so angry at every one of them so I storm back to my hut and crawl into my sleeping bag. I'm lying there thinking all kinds of terrible thoughts, very judgmental and arrogant thoughts. I can't stand the stupidity of it all.
I'm laying there fuming to myself for twenty or thirty minutes and had almost drifted off to a restless sleep when one of the researchers came in. His name is Elliot and he has fiery red hair. That's all I really remember about his person. He wasn't that interesting to me. I sit up though and scowl as I spit, "What is the point of us being here. Of me being here. I'm wasting my time. All I do is fix people up so I can watch them light each other on fire or drown each other."
He jumped a little. I don't think he realized I was awake, maybe he didn't even know I was there. His shirt was half off and he quickly pulled it back down. I thought that odd, but then he was an odd quiet fellow so it did fit his personality. He shrugged. "I don't think they drowned the boy. The parents took him to the river to ease his pain. To bathe him in the cool water. I don't think the child drowned. I think he just died."
"Sure that's what they told you isn't it? They are probably lying. Nobody wants the white people in the village to know what really went on. I bet they drowned that boy to appease the 'river god' or whatever. Who knows what retarded notion.." I broke off as emotion took the words out of my mouth. "It just doesn't make any sense. Why do people do things that make so little sense."
"I don't know." he was in his sleeping bag now and we didn't say anything else that night.
On one particular day the village was astir with whispers. Sacrifices to the river gods must be made soon. A small boy has gone missing. In the jungle that surrounds the village live the big cats and the foliage is so thick it would take only a moment to get lost in it. The villagers are not worried about the jungle. They are worried about the river. In the river live the giant crocodiles and anacondas. These mighty creatures have grown large and fat for lack of predators. The villagers are not worried about them. There is something more sinister lurking in the river.
Petari is sobbing little strangled sobs in her hut that can be heard throughout the village. She is grieving for the child she has lost and the one she is about to lose. It's tradition, you see, to sacrifice a second child from a family recently bereaved. Petari has four children. She had four children, now she only has three. By tomorrow she will only have two children left. The old women in the village try to encourage her by pointing out that two remain. It doesn't change anything. The old women don't seem to mind her crying. "It is better that one woman grieves than two." So they say. Take the sacrifice from the family already grieving, so that nobody else need feel the same pain.
Petari would try to hide her child, but there was no opportunity. Her husbands prevent her. Petari has three husbands in the village. If you can call them that, because there is no marriage. There is only the partnership of humanity and once that partnership produces a child, that man is joined to her in a bond of parenthood that connects them.
The husbands guard her to make sure she doesn't try to rescue the sacrifice. Two of them eye the third warily. He is the father of the sacrifice. He might be overcome and try to save him. The third husband Fallah is a thin man with a weathered face. If he feels anything for his son, he hides it well. For now.
Darkness approaches and the villagers gather together and build a fire. A very big fire. There is a feast and dancing to celebrate the river. Many rituals are performed to please the god of the river. Late in the evening Petari is brought out of her hut and made to pray to the river god for peace. The villagers believe she must have angered the river god in some way so she must beg him for peace and give him another one of her children as an offering. She belabors the prayer and draws it out as long as possible. She begs the river god to return her first lost child so she won't have to sacrifice another.
At last the husbands bring the second child to the gathering. He is small but old enough to understand speech. The husbands present him to the elders of the village. At this the woman's shrieks increase to almost hysterical levels. It takes all three husbands to contain her as she tries to reach for her child.
A man with a torch comes to him and leans down to whisper something in his ear. The small boy listens and shakes his head vigorously. A bit more whispering occurs. At last the boy appears to understand. He gathers up the edges of his long brown robe and prepares to run. The man touches the edge of the torch to the young boy's clothing and pandemonium breaks loose. The boy is running toward the river while the villagers all scream at him simultaneously. They are all screaming for him to run. Oh child, just make it to the river before there is much pain.
He runs as fast as his small legs will carry him. It isn't far. His mother is right behind him, she has torn herself away from her husbands and she will be there at the edge of the river when he arrives. The fire is hot on his tail now. He can feel it touching his back and the scream rips from his lips. He runs faster. The river is just there. He throws himself into the water. Suddenly the pain subsides, but now he has a different problem. The current is strong and even though he can swim, he isn't strong enough to win this battle.
He slips past his mother's desperate snatching arms and she shrieks despair. He is rolling now, tumbling down the river. He manages to catch a few desperate breaths here and there as he is pulled this way and that. He is terrified and unable to figure out which way is up or down as he is carried down the river.
He is suddenly lifted out of the water by the back of his robe. There is his father above him, leaning down over the river on a fallen tree. A glimmer of love crosses the hardened face and the boy clings to his father as he scrambles back up to safety. Soon he is in his mother's arms. The village will celebrate again. There will be yet another feast. This feast will honor the river god for kindly returning the boy and all will be well, for the river god is pacified. Of course, this feast would still have happened even if the boy had drowned. Either way, the river god is pacified and the village will be safe for the summer months.
The hottest part of the year, the three months of June, July and August. These months are the most dangerous out of all twelve. Not even the rainy season or wild animals claim as many villagers as is lost to the river in summer.
I came to the village three days after the little boy got burned. It took me two weeks to get there from the coast. I barely made it alive, but that is another story.
I'd just finished medical school and was hankering for some kind of adventure to counterbalance the tedium of book study. I had several job offers lined up but after three months I hadn't come around to making my choice. I dropped by my former professor's office and we had a bit of a chat. I tried explaining my problem by talking about one job and then the other and another until he stopped me with an upraised hand. "Casey, there's nothing wrong with any of these jobs. The problem is with you. You don't want to settle down yet."
He was right of course. He usually is. "Why don't you take some time away. Don't make a decision about a job right now. I'm sending a team of researchers upriver in a week. Why don't you go along? You could take medicines with you and treat ailments in the villages along the way. Maybe you'd get interested in what my researchers are working on."
I won't lie, I turned my nose up at first. I think I'd imagined something a bit more exciting for my first adventure. Maybe helping victims of a hurricane or plague. Maybe patching up men on the battle field.
The problem was, we're a bit short on hurricanes, plagues and battle fields right now. That's certainly a funny thing to say but it's true. There are years where we have more than one major disaster happening simultaneously, and then there are years like this one where not much happens at all. Almost feels eery. Like when the tide goes out before a tsunami. Something bad will happen soon.
He must have seen the skepticism in my face because he came around his desk and sat on the edge facing me. "I get it. You're not ready to settle down at one job, but you have to do something. This would make an excellent marker on your resume."
Since we were waiting for something bad to happen, I had no choice but to take medicine to the villages.
I did that.
It was a long journey along the wide river that narrowed drastically as we got inland. We passed through countless villages and I got to do what I'd been trained for. I didn't have much time for wishful thinking because there were teeth to pull and wounds to dress; fevers to break and medicines to give. The jungle has a way of making people sick. Especially those who are already susceptible from allergies and genetic deficiencies.
We stayed in the village just long enough to treat the ill and instruct the family members on how to continue caring for them. Then we moved on to the next village.
By the fourteenth day I'd gotten into a routine. I was starting to get comfortable and get a solid idea of what I'd likely face in the next village. Unfortunately I was not prepared for what I did find there.
When we first arrived it was chaos. The maps we followed only took us as far as the previous village and we didn't know this one was even here until we were right in the middle of it. A lot of yelling ensued and the villagers pointed sticks at us and made threats in a foreign language. Thankfully we had brought along a man from the last village who could speak with them. He explained, and one of the researchers who knew a bit of the dialect translated his words back to me.
"These people are from the sea. They have come to study the river and the jungle. They have come to learn your ways. They bring medicine for your sicknesses. They have good medicine."
The villagers whispered among themselves and then some of them ran away. The man tells us, "We wait."
The villagers return with a small boy. All arms and legs. So frail. The woman brings him to me and I can see that he is unconscious. He is covered in sweat and blisters. I ask through the translator what has happened to this boy.
He looks at me and says, "They did the ritual of fire to appease the river god." It took a few exchanges to get a picture of what happened. I was in too much shock to believe the story and I had to be assured that it was true. "So you're saying one boy drowns in the river so they light another boy on fire and send him in too?!"
"Yes, that is the way here. We must appease the anger of the river god by making sacrifices. We know the god is pleased when he returns our sacrifice. The summer will be safer for everyone."
"It doesn't make things safer. There is no river god. All you're doing is hurting another innocent boy." I was furious and I tried to reason with the man but it was no use. He just kept saying, "You're not one of us, you cannot understand why we do what we do."
Finally I gave up trying and started tending to the little boy. I had no idea how bad it was because he was wrapped in various cloths. Once I got the layers off I couldn't believe what I was seeing. His entire back was scorched and most of the skin was gone. I knew immediately that there wasn't anything I could do. It had already been three days since he'd been burned and the infection was far progressed. If he was to have any chance at survival he needed to go to a real hospital and it would take a miracle. If he even survived the trip.
The parents listened as I explained the gravity of the situation but they didn't seem convinced. I told them to put the child on a gurney and I would accompany them on the way back down to the city. I don't know why I suggested it because deep in my heart I knew he wouldn't make it. Fourteen days of travel in his condition. I guess I hoped maybe I could keep him alive with the medications. If I could just keep the infection under control, maybe he could survive.
Whispers broke out among the villagers. The translator tells me it is late, but they will take the child to the city tomorrow before the sun rises. For now we must rest. We are given a hut to rest in for the night and I sit there cross-legged on my unrolled sleeping bag reading my tablet. Then staring out into space, I wonder how it is that I've come so far only to turn around and go straight back the way I came. Some kind of adventure.
There is a high-pitched shriek that startles me and sends icy shivers through my body. We all rush out of the hut to find that the village is in action. Everyone is running to the river toward the unearthly sounds ripping through the night air. There is a crowd gathered at the edge of the river and I cannot see what it is at first. Then the crowd parts and I see a man carrying a child in his arms.
Disbelief. It is the father of the boy with the burned body. He is carrying his son. Tears are streaming down the angular face and he announces helplessly, "The river gods have taken him."
At this point I'm astonished, believing of course that the father has drowned his son intentionally. I feel so angry at every one of them so I storm back to my hut and crawl into my sleeping bag. I'm lying there thinking all kinds of terrible thoughts, very judgmental and arrogant thoughts. I can't stand the stupidity of it all.
I'm laying there fuming to myself for twenty or thirty minutes and had almost drifted off to a restless sleep when one of the researchers came in. His name is Elliot and he has fiery red hair. That's all I really remember about his person. He wasn't that interesting to me. I sit up though and scowl as I spit, "What is the point of us being here. Of me being here. I'm wasting my time. All I do is fix people up so I can watch them light each other on fire or drown each other."
He jumped a little. I don't think he realized I was awake, maybe he didn't even know I was there. His shirt was half off and he quickly pulled it back down. I thought that odd, but then he was an odd quiet fellow so it did fit his personality. He shrugged. "I don't think they drowned the boy. The parents took him to the river to ease his pain. To bathe him in the cool water. I don't think the child drowned. I think he just died."
"Sure that's what they told you isn't it? They are probably lying. Nobody wants the white people in the village to know what really went on. I bet they drowned that boy to appease the 'river god' or whatever. Who knows what retarded notion.." I broke off as emotion took the words out of my mouth. "It just doesn't make any sense. Why do people do things that make so little sense."
"I don't know." he was in his sleeping bag now and we didn't say anything else that night.
Monster River Chapter 1 The Two Sons of Petari
Reviewed by Samantha Jayne Frost
on
June 23, 2018
Rating:
Reviewed by Samantha Jayne Frost
on
June 23, 2018
Rating:
