Cunabala & Patria Ch1 part 3

    Her son would live, but how?



    Customs about men and boys were harsh in her community, more harsh than most. The birth of son was seen as a bad omen that could only be remedied with fire and prayer.  Men were only allowed as guests if accompanied by a female partner: intruders were always killed.



    But even the harshest customs had loopholes and exceptions, my mother's village was no exception. Boys could be spared if they were born outside of the village but they must be sent away within the first year; where they went was at the mother's discretion and it was not uncommon that  infant boys simply disappeared.  That was not an option for my mother. I was her child and she would be the only mother I knew.The father could come and claim him; that had only ever happened once, more than fifty years ago, and my father was not an option.  The last choice, the only choice really, was risky. It would take all of her conviction and all the weight of her status in the community to do it.   



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        The Azon settlement is located in the most western part of Cunabala in the heart of the an old growth forest the Azon women call Avalon. It lies so deep in the dense  forest that if you could not find it if you didn't know where to look. Its location is made even more enigmatic by that fact that my mother's people do not live on the ground. Their homes are built high in the conopy supported by limbs thick as a man made sturdy with age. Homes hidden by the thick conopy and are connected to each other by bridges that had been built or by the natural path of sprawling  limbs of the trees themselves.  The only way up to the tree huts above are  by ladders that are kept down in the day time. The only way into the village at night is by climbing certain trees called night-ladders that have grips and foot-holes carved into them. But even these are not easily spotted. Night-ladders are no particular species of tree nor are they trees that were easily climbed. Night-ladders can be any tree; some begin at the base of the tree, stop for a while, and picked up on further up the tree or on a completely different tree close by or yards away. It is only through practice that the Azon woman memorize the intricate pathways of the Night-ladder system that can terminated into a seemingly endless lattice of trees designed to send intruders into dead ends or weak branches. This elaborate system of movement through the trees has protected the Azon women for hundreds of years and continues to do so now.

      It was the middle of the night when she finally finished her three day trek back to the village.She was tired but her exhaustion was mental rather than physical. So many things had to be done before morning and only a few hours to do it in. First things first, she had to go home. Agrita, her lover and helpmate, had been apart for far too long for her to find out about her plans at the same time as the other women. She would be the first to know her plans, she deserved as much.  My mother strapped her gear to her back and me to her front and prayed silently that I would not cry. She chose to climb a dying oak tree that provided the quickest path to her tree hut. The ladder started from the base of the oak and went up twenty feet before the steps gave way to a maze of branches. Left and up a crooked branch that eventually intertwined itself with the limbs of a beech tree. From there another night ladder was hidden in the trunk of the tree the journeyed all the way up into the middle canopy. The most dangerous part lay ahead where the beech and oak intersected: It was fraught with rotten limbs and flimsy branches. There was no more night ladders from there and she had to navigate her way through spiraling maze of tangled limbs. Eventually she made it to the hut level and opened the door to her home

    When she opened the door she could hardly believe she had made it back. She had been gone  for three of the moon's cycles but it was  only the past three days that seemed liked forever.  Everything seemed so normal. The one room tree hut was divided unequally in two by decorated pelts: the large sitting area and to the left the smaller sleeping section behind the pelts.  To the right in the furthest corner were  several sitting furs sewn together and stuffed with soft plant fibers. All along the walls were hooks and shelves lined with dried meat, herbs, and jars and pouches of spices. In the middle of the back wall  was the raised fire stand where she and Agrita shared hot meals and soothing memories whenever she was not on a hunting expedition. Five years ago she and Agrita had  built this hut themselves and made it a home. Their love had grown  from a sapling to an oak in that time  was the best partner anyone asked for, even if she was an outsider.  Mother said she will always remember the spring she met Agrita, my Au Ma and her most beloved.

    Moments had passed in the doorway but  they seemed like an eternity. In that time she had been thinking about how she me my Au Ma and what she had come to mean to her over the years. They had met my on a spring hunting trip five years ago while she was trading winter rabbit furs to the Nepqua people that inhabit the northern coastlines of the country. It was the tiniest village on the coast with no more than six families at that time. It was there that she met Agrita, my Au  Ma.

      She was short  buxom woman with thick limbs, not fat, but sturdy and a round face. Her skin was the color of the sand her people lived on, a smooth light brown and hair a pale ocean blue that flowed down to her ankles. She was ten years her senior with a husband and two children  and to make matters more complicated she was the chief's daughter. My Au Ma was reluctant at first. She had a  family to take care of and her status to consider but in the end she left with my mother. She let a woman who was still really just a girl convince her to leave everything she had ever known to live among, what her people  called, savages. She wasn't accepted immediately into the bosom of the Azon women but my Au Ma proved herself a valuable asset  with her knowledge of plants. No one has ever cultivated wild crops the way she did. Integrating them in patches seamlessly into the forest that only the keenest eye would notice the pattern of vegetation was not as natural as it seemed.