Olly Eade Eade

CHAPTER 1

A Hole in the Head

Lying there, corpse-like. On a bed. Can that really be me?

I believe Lawrence Taylor is, or was, my name. My name that time. Or should I say, this time? The label above the bed certainly reads:

LAWRENCE TAYLOR

I guess that has to be me, so still and seemingly lifeless apart from a chest that moves up and down to the rhythm of the ventilator.

The rhythm of a dance with death?

It looks complicated. Tubes, wires, monitors, machines—lots of those—and a transparent bag dangling from one side of the bed, half-filled with golden fluid.

I remember. It’s called urine. My kidneys—or his—are working. So… alive after all. The monitor tracing of my (his?) heart action, which beeps every time it flicks a spike, is living proof of this. But I am also here, outside that curious space called time. The ‘fourth dimension’ of the space-time continuum that controls everything down there.

Living? My heart—or his—still beats.

But here, disconnected from tubes, wires, machines, and heart monitor tracings, here I remember other things… other worlds… other lives…

*****

Not far from our little village of longhouses made of mud and branches is a huge cave. My brother tells me this is where our ancestors lived. He also told me that before they moved in it was home to a family of cave bears—the reason why our father’s fathers many times over painted bears on the ‘time wall’ there. The man chasing the Great Bear with his spear held high is our grandfather’s, grandfather’s grandfather, my brother told me. But the spirit of the bear left that cave long ago, so our ancestors added to the wall deer, bison, horses, and other beasts.

I do so love the horses. That fateful day, my brother teased me about this. I was helping Father paint a horse on the time wall. As he guided my small hand with his muscled arm, and as, together, we followed the curves of the animal’s body and thighs, my tongue held in concentration between my lips, Brother announced, out of the blue, that little girls who paint horses end up looking like horses. For sure he deserved the slap our father gave him, but not a night-long vigil for thieves from neighbouring villages, and for lions, bears and for wolves. A punishment that, in my mind, far exceeded the crime. I felt bad about this since love for my big brother is second only to what I feel for our mother.

It was his first vigil. Had he fallen asleep, allowing the fire to die, he would most certainly have fallen prey to a lion that had been seen near the village. All night, I lay under my animal fur staring at the dark longhouse entrance, listening to the menacing sounds of the unsleeping forest, and fearing for my beloved brother out there, alone, clutching his spear. My only consolation was the dim light flickering between the broken-off branches crisscrossing the entrance. The fire had not yet gone out, which meant that Brother was awake.

Awoken by a scream, I scrambled to my feet and ran outside to find Mother staring at the ground. My brother’s spear lay beside the smouldering embers, but no brother.

The lion?

Father pushed past me. Mother immediately set upon him like a lioness herself, pummelling his chest with her fists, berating him for forcing their only son to take the vigil that night. Father grabbed her arms and ordered her to calm down.

“He’s gone to relieve himself, that’s all,” he insisted. Not true. Later, when dawn broke, the whole village, including uncles, aunts and cousins, scoured the forest, calling his name, searching for pug marks and blood trails. Father kept repeating that there was no blood to be seen so the lion could not have killed him. Its claws and teeth would have left large pools of blood, and we saw none, so, like a spider clinging to a web in a storm, I hung on to his words.

Father saw that I was tiring and told me to return to the village with our mother. Her anger had swelled to a fury that rivalled that of a cornered beast. Before he slunk off, guiltily, into the undergrowth, I had never seen her so cross with Father. But as Mother led me back to our village, I blamed myself should anything bad have happened to my brother. Going on about horses all the time, no wonder he teased me. Father, as always, was only defending me.

All day, I sat huddled at the far end of our longhouse, hugging my bent-up knees, wishing they belonged to my brother, refusing food offered by our distraught mother. I told her I would never eat again if they failed to find him.

A loud shout!

One of my elder cousins appeared in the longhouse entrance. I sprang to my feet and ran to meet her. I knew from her smile that they had found him.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s hurt… but okay. He fell off a ledge in the dark whilst chasing away a bear. Must have hit his head on a rock.”

“But he’s alive! How hurt?”

“Talking funny. Finding it difficult to walk, too. Our dads are supporting him.”

The sound of voices, including that of my brother, encouraged me to push past our cousin to the clearing in the centre of our village, scuffing the ashes of the previous night’s fire as I ran on towards voices coming from beyond the trees. Father and Uncle soon appeared, supporting my brother. His legs were flopping about in a funny way, but funnier was what came out of his mouth: a gabble of nonsense.

In the village, they stopped. And I stared. They let go of my brother to see whether he could stand alone. Swaying like a tree at the mercy of the wind, he was unable to remain upright. He had to be held as he mumbled on about a black bear with a brown bottom.

They took my brother to the cave and gently lowered him onto the ground, propped up against the time wall. My painted horse, the cause of what happened, seemed to be perched on his head. Although appearing comical, this made me sad. I so wanted to hug him and ask his forgiveness, but with Mother and Father fussing over him, and our cousin, destined to be his partner in life, cleaning the blood off the top of his head using her skin skirt, he just babbled on about a black bear with a brown bottom as if talking to himself.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You know that cliff in the woods, where the land suddenly drops down, hidden by bushes?” It was our cousin who answered for my brother, her beloved. I clapped a hand to my mouth. The cliff was as high as four men standing on top of one another. Had he tumbled over that? If so, how could he have survived such a fall?

Father flapped his hands in despair.

“From what he’s trying to tell us, it seems a bear surprised him during the night,” he said. “Whether black or brown, I can’t make out, though if brown it’s unlikely he’d be here with us now. Truly, I don’t understand. He knows he must never chase a bear. Just stay still and wave a fire brand if threatened. They always go away. But no! He disobeyed me and went after the bear, it seems.”

“Suppose the bear didn’t go away like you said. Suppose it attacked him. Got angry because he burned its bottom making it brown. Suppose…” I burbled.

“Enough!” shouted Father, turning his anger on me.

In a flood of tears, I ran to my corner at the far end of the cave. I call it mine because this is where I would always try to hide when in trouble, upset or plain furious. Then, it felt like a mix of all three.

A little later, Brother was able to stand unsupported. He had stopped going on about a black bear with a brown bottom. He came across to me and talked, let me hug him and spill tears over his fur tunic. But I could tell he was not himself, for he kept holding his head and saying there was a beast inside it trying to burst his head open. I reassured him that it was sore because he banged it on a rock as he fell. Then he vomited. Over me.

Throughout the following ten risings and settings of the sun, Brother seemed changed. He no longer argued with Father. He often fell asleep when he should have been helping the family, he forever went on about the beast inside his head and frequently vomited for no apparent reason. Puke shot out of his mouth, spraying whosoever happened to be in the way. And Father kept prodding him with the blunt end of his spear to wake him up. On Mother’s insistence, Brother remained inside our longhouse all day long. And each day, he seemed worse.

On the eleventh day after his fall, I could not wake him up. Nor could Father. Not even after giving his son a kick. The whole village left to go hunting, with Father moaning on about having a ‘useless son’. Mother, too, joined them that day. Not actually hunting, herself, but gathering berries and mushrooms with which to garnish the meat of the kill. I was left to guard Brother who was breathing as if asleep and refused to be roused. After a while, his breathing changed. It stopped for long periods, then, following a gasp, would start up again. I became scared. After all, this was all my fault for being horse mad. What if he were to stop breathing altogether and die? There was only one thing I could do…

She was called the ‘Healing Woman’. My parents took both Grandmother and Grandfather to her when they fell ill. It made no difference to them, of course. They died anyway. But they were old. I knew that all old things die sooner or later. It was the way of the Great Spirit. But Brother was young and fit and soon, I hoped, would become a father himself.

I ran to her hut in the woods, taking care when passing by the cliff. Thank the Great Spirit she was there, sitting cross-legged at the entrance, her eyes closed, and softly chanting to herself. Beside the entrance were gifts given by those whose loved ones had been saved by her interventions. Dead rabbits, baskets of corn, wood carvings.

I approached. Slowly. One of my cousins had once told me that she was possessed by the spirits of all our ancestors. This worried me. How would I be judged?

Suddenly, her eyes opened and fixed on me as Father would fix a deer with the point of his spear.

“I know already,” she said. “The black bear with a brown bottom. Inside your brother’s head. Bring him here.”

How could she know? Had Mother also visited her? Or—and this worried me—had my brother’s spirit already left this world?

“I can’t,” I replied. “He won’t wake up.”

The Healing Woman closed her eyes and rocked back and forth a few times before startling me by springing up to her full height. She was tall. Even taller than Father. She was indeed the ‘Goddess’ of whom Mother would sing me to sleep when I was little. The Goddess of Life.

I jumped backwards. She disappeared inside the hut, then reappeared with a pouch. She showed me its contents. Flint tools as sharp the teeth of a lion. From behind her emerged a small, thin man with a hunchback. He held a skin bottle filled with water. Together, they followed me as I ran back through the forest to our village, the hunchback limping hurriedly behind the striding woman.

Praise the Great Spirit, Brother was still breathing, though he remained unrousable.

“A rug!” the woman commanded. I found a bearskin rug and carefully spread this out on the floor of our longhouse. I helped them carry my brother as gently as possible and place him face up on the rug. “Now fetch two handfuls of clean moss.” Moss? Why? Not daring to ask, I hurried off. There was moss everywhere in the wood, and I soon returned with armfuls of the stuff. The woman laughed. “He’s not a bison!” she joked.

I stood and watched as the she and the hunchback got to work. That they both knew exactly what they were doing was without question. First, the hunchback cleansed Brother’s bruised scalp with water-soaked moss, then shaved off his long brown curls using a flint knife. He looked most strange without hair. To release the bear spirit that had entered Brother’s head through the bruise, the hunchback cut a deep gash. He pressed moss into the wound to stem the flow of blood before being handed a flint blade fixed, with twine, onto the end of a stout stick. This, he held firm between flattened palms then, anchoring the blade in the wound, rubbed his hands together, backwards and forwards, fast, as I had seen the men do to make sparks when igniting dried moss for a longhouse fire. All the time, the Healing Woman chanted to the spirit of the bear that had made its way into Brother’s head when he fell. I knew that Brother would die if the bear’s spirit could not be set free.

This procedure seemed to take forever. Time again! But perhaps it just seemed that way because of my love for my brother. I really did not know how I would carry on without him. Who else would ensure that the man my grumpy Father chose for me to partner would be the right one? I could trust only Brother on this, and, indeed, on most other matters. And he had been right to tease me about my obsession with horses.

The Healing Woman stopped chanting and beckoned me to come closer.

“Watch,” she said. “The bear’s life force will be set free.”

The hunchback placed a fistful of moss over the hole in my brother’s head, stood up and stepped back, indicating for me to take his place. The Healing Woman, after pouring water over her hands, knelt beside my brother. I gasped when she revealed what had been concealed by the moss. A hole large enough for her to insert two long slender fingers. Using gentle pressure, as if seeking the trapped spirit of the bear that Brother had mumbled on about, she made circles inside his skull, then, quite suddenly, pulled her hand away. Immediately, dark red, congealed blood bubbled out of the hole, sliding over Brother’s shaven scalp, pooling on the rug. A sizeable handful collected before the blood stopped flowing. Brother’s breathing became easier, more regular. The hunchback took the Healing Woman’s place. With great care, he pushed together the cut margins of Brother’s scalp over the hole, and, using a fresh handful of moss, applied pressure over the oozing wound.

I could not believe my own eyes when Brother opened his. He peered around, alarmed. His gaze settled on me and he spoke:

“Sister… is that you?”

I wanted to pull the hunchback away and hug my stupid, loveable, big brother, but, tears streaming, I merely nodded. Brother smiled. Something fluttered inside my young girl’s chest. Pride, perhaps? Had I not gone for help would he now be dead? The Healing Woman confirmed this:

“If your sister hadn’t come to me straightaway, and if we hadn’t released the spirit of the bear, you, young man, would now be with your ancestors.”

“She’s the best sister anyone could have, I know it,” Brother said.

“She is indeed,” agreed the hunchback, speaking for the first time. “Now, use this flint to cut a strip from your skirt, child. So that I can bind the moss to his head. To close the hole.”

I took the flint and hurriedly cut free a broad strip of goatskin which the hunchback wound tightly around Brother’s head, fixing it in position with some twine I found.

“Can he stand up now?” I asked.

“The spirit of the bear is set free. No reason why he shouldn’t,” said the Healing Woman.

“Bear? What bear?” asked Brother.

He seemed to have no recollection that he had been mumbling about a black bear with a brown bottom ever since his fall. The Healing Woman did not seem to find this surprising. She gathered up her flint implements and, with the hunchback waddling behind her, left. I prepared some food for Brother. Grain and remnants of meat shaved off the thigh bone of a young bison that Father and our uncles had killed several days before. Grinning, he devoured this in just a few eager mouthfuls. And without vomiting.

When Father, Mother, uncles, aunts, and cousins returned, they all crowded around Brother, unable to believe the transformation. Later, in front of our longhouse, apart from Brother who sat and watched, we danced around the fire whilst Father chanted a prayer to the spirit of the bear that had been trapped inside Brother’s head and released by the Healing Woman and her hunchback assistant. I broke away and went to sit beside my brother. He put his arm around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder whilst watching the spinning circle of dancing shadows stretched out across the ground by the light of the fire, as our family and other villagers jerked and twirled to the rhythm of the chant.

“I remember now,” Brother said quietly. “That bear.”

“Tell me,” I whispered.

It all came out. There had indeed been a black bear with a brown bottom…