A Drum Beat Forever: Spark

A turn at fiction for a third installment in this serial. Start at the beginning if you missed it.

Enjoy!

As with all children, Kemen suffered the amnesia of youth which ran as a river over the stone of his mind, smoothing it and carrying away forever those loose ends, moments of tenderness, self-sacrifice, and shameful cruelty acted upon him, with the singular indifference of the natural order. What remained as he emerged from that river and entered into early childhood were the grooves and impressions carved out by those formative first lessons — leaving in him the manners and habits of the boy he believed himself to be.

But some memories survived. Small and scattered things as the hissing sparks that cracked and spit off a winter fire — vivid to behold, yet gone before they could be examined too closely.

Such memories had a way of flashing before his eyes in the pitch dark of night as he lay beside Mother and little sister Serega on their bedroll. As woman and girl worried the air with the breathy whispers of sleep, and their shared blanket rose and fell like the ribs of a living thing, Kemen would see a blinding spark of a memory in his mind’s eye.

A flash of men and women laughing on a summer night too hot for sleep. A spirit of mischief had made itself known and the entire family had lingered in the main chamber of the longhouse long after sunset until Uncle Kotil and some others had appeared in response to some unspoken summons. Wet air tart with beer stinking breath from men competing to speak, pitch black wall shadows undulating under the orange glare of a fire, and the mouthwatering smell of cheese as women laughed over the firepit where patties of sheep cheese bubbled into brown spiderwebs of crispness until they were deemed ready to eat.

The men lingered closer to the door, passing a tall pot of beer, their rumbling voices mounting like a tide until it broke into cascades of laughter. At some point Uncle Kotil began to patter out a rapacious drum beat from a bench.

Kemen and cousin Udine had been tossing pebbles at the hanging wolf skull in the corner, but became possessed by the rhythmic drumming. Without a word exchanged between them, they rose up and charged into the women's circle about the firepit. They danced wildly in the fire’s heat to the popping drumbeat. The bitter smell of hot cheese clung like sweat and orange firelight winked off the half naked little boy limbs swinging to the laughter and applause of the women.

Uncle Kotil had hooted them on and redoubled his efforts on the drum, driving Udine and Kemen into a frenzy. They pursued one another around the fire in alternating leaps, stomps, and arm-swinging movements to strike masculine poses for their adoring audience. Kemen saw Mother for only a heartbeat, but that vision of her would be the foundation of her in his mind forever — tall, beautiful, flowing dark hair; she clapped to them music’s off-notes as sister Serega sat propped up on her hip, a swiveling baby owl's head following Kemen with wide eyes. Across the fire Udine's small muscles and catlike grin hung by firelight in a field of darkness — a spark falling into the blackness.

Cousin Udine's grin was a constant of Kemen's memories, if not at the center, than haunting them from the edges. Being nearly the same age they were often tasked to work together. Udine was slightly the elder, which granted him authority on a wide range of subjects. Once on a clear day while fetching a bowl of grain from the storehouse he had told Kemen that bird shit was lucky because it was a sign of the Sky Father's blessing. That comment had felt very significant to Kemen at the time.

The other cousins of the longhouse were infrequent flashes in Kemen's mind and appeared only occasionally as the blanket’s warmth took him. Hineor, the ruddy cheeked eldest, and was neither man nor boy at that time, large framed yet soft and nearly hairless. He seemed always to be between places or looking for something that took him back to the fields, appearing at meals only to vanish without warning. Attempts to recruit him into child games were ignored, and calling him ‘red-face’ would get you a stinging smack on your cheek.

Cousin Kata was the fair haired shadow of Aunty Budic's skirts. Her eyes twinkled like gemstones when telling her mother that the boys had been off climbing trees instead of fetching water or cleaning cookware. This became a great game, as Aunty Budic's tyranny could never be battled directly but the young boys could occasionally outwit Kata as an avatar of her mother’s indomitable will. A favorite game of the boys was to hide Aunty Budic's bone hair brush whenever she leant it to Kata. The boys would feign ignorance of its location until the poor girl cried and confessed it was lost, at which point Udine would 'discover' it in the most obvious location imaginable.

Small memories, glances across time.

A winter day that felt like night, the dark days that lasted forever after Solstice, Uncle Arronian had gotten on all fours on the longhouse floor and played as if he were a bucking horse for the boys to ride. Kemen and Udine fought for a turn until they both fell back onto the packed dirt, laughing too hard to rise again.

Long before that, or perhaps after, a damp breeze smelling of leaves ran through the roundhouse door. Mother had cried without reason and left to speak with Uncle Arronian. Kemen’s throat felt tight as he had watched innocent little Serega crawl over the cramped space of their roundhouse. There would be no help if she cried, but fortunately he caught her when she threatened to butt her head into a thicket of wicker baskets.

Most of the belongings within the roundhouse were not their own, but crowded them all the same. Tall pots for winter grain, fur, bolts of wool, herbs hung by cord to dry, stacked firewood, and cord nets that sagged from the ceiling bearing masses of dry roots. For Kemen, Mother, and Serega there only remained an empty central space where they slept on a reed mat beside a seldom used firepit.

Little Serega had looked so confused when he had pulled her up under the arms and turned her from the baskets to face him — no Mother in sight, Kemen’s heart stilled as her lip curled at the way his clumsy hands had pressed her ribs. Her little head bobbed like an apple on a windblown branch as she judged her brother in this new light, first with fear but then a gurgling of unpracticed back-throated laughter spilled out.

Two teeth smiling from a pink gum-line, gone in a flash.

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