Bow and Arrow

Jangili slowed her breath, taking careful aim. Her target was small, well-hidden. There was but the thinnest, narrowest line of sight connecting between them, and making the shot very nearly impossible. The precision required was complete, and the margin for error was needle-wide. Suffice there be a slight shift in the light breeze and the resulting minute skew in the arrow's route would condemn the shot to failure. But for the tribe's finest archer, impossible was nothing more than a challenge, adverse circumstances a foundation for growth. And challenges were deeply embedded in her everyday life as well as the desire to grow. She whispered a chant to the Gods, invoking their guidance of the arrow that was about to fly from her bow. She always did this before a crucial shot, and this shot was a crucial one since it promised to set her on the path to fame and glory among the tribe. She would become a legend among her people, second in importance only to the Chief. And from there the way to becoming the tribe's youngest chief was short- shorter than the journey that awaited her arrow through the thicket.

'Miungu huruma juu, Nipe nguvu

Basi mshale wangu mgomo, Na kunipa utukufu'

She chanted as she drew the bow string further back, increasing the tension on the ends of the bow. Her target was precisely in her crosshairs. It was about to have an arrow shot right through its heart, and it didn't even know it. Stealth was one of Jangili's favorite elements in the hunt. One of many.

            'That's it', she thought. 'I've got you.' Then she shifted her whole upper body ever-so-subtly, a hair's breadth to the right, adjusting the usual skew of her aim. Finally, in one swift motion she released her grip of the string, keeping the rest of the bow remained utterly still. And the arrow flew ahead. Under the branch, between the leaves, through the bush, against the wind, cutting through the air at a perfect pace, following the only route that could bring it to its destination. It cleared every one of the obstacles on its way, and then, finally-

            Miss!

            It appeared the Gods had deemed her target, not Jangili, worthy of their auspices, and in the final moment that separated life from death she came on to her hind legs, changing the position of her body. Both archer and target growled as the arrow drove itself into the bear's side. The bear- for the sudden pain that shot through her side; Jangili- for the deflection of her perfect shot. For her a shot that left her target alive was a miss. That's why she never carried more than a single arrow in her quiver. And now her quiver was empty, and her only arrow was lodged in the bear's side. Luckily, her own groan had been drowned out by the bear's so that the bear was still haplessly oblivious of the position of its huntress. The cover of the vegetation was thick and it hid Jangili well, and she fearlessly observed her target though she was unarmed. The bear struggled with the arrow but every time she tried to yank it out it increased the pain in her wound, so she finally reluctantly decided to leave it dangling from her side. Jangili could tell from the bear's clumsy movements that the arrow had caused a serious injury. In a moment of characteristic boldness she lunged forward, abandoning her cover, and charged at the weakened bear. Finally catching wind of her attacker, the bear turned to face Jangili, limping on her compromised right side. She looked twice as large, thrice as strong, and four times as fierce from up close, when there was no cover to hide behind and no arrows with which to attack. No hunter or huntress would dare confront a grown bear this way- none but the young, audacious tribeswoman. She didn't even start when the mighty bear took to her hind legs and grew to twice her normal height. She could detect the bear's weakness even in this most menacing, imposing of stances, and she held her ground in front of the brown, raging beast. Jangili kept her composure and spoke calmly to her quarry:

'Growl and fight, beast, as you ache,

But me you shall not scare;

With patience life you shall forsake,

And glory will be my share.'

            What made Jangili such a fearsome huntress wasn't merely her precision with an arrow or her boldness where others cowered, but her command, as that of all great hunters, of the virtue of patience. It was a lesson her father had worked long and hard to teach her.

'A well-aimed arrow will kill a man, they say,

For a true archer's arrow will not bend;

But not a hundred arrows will keep your enemies at bay,

T'is patience without end.'

            And yet it was a very narrow area in which to maneuver that was governed by both patience and boldness, and whenever she overstepped the boundaries of that area, it was into the territory of the latter. A more prudent hunter would've taken advantage of the bear's considerable physical impairment and followed her to her lair. Then they would quickly return to the village for a weapon and complete the hunt. But Jangili correctly assessed that in her current state the bear would hardly, if at all, triumph in a physical struggle between the two. Equally importantly, the quarry would be afraid to so engage her huntress after the latter had demonstrated her capacity to inflict harm. Therefore she decided in favor of a direct confrontation- one that would irate her father and exacerbate the condition of her ailing mother, should news of it find its way to their ears. Courage, she thought she knew, was the lot of the young.

'Wisdom, prudence, intuition,

At old age are the truth;

But courage, liveliness, ambition,

Are the fortune of sweet youth.'

            And so there she stood, rejoicing at her fortune, and waiting not for the bear's display to end but for it to expose a certain point of vulnerability that would tip the scales in her favor. Indeed it was in the throes of her ostentatious spectacle that the bear left her side unguarded and the arrow hanging as accessibly as Jangili could hope to have it. With characteristic agility she lunged forward and snatched the blunt, harmless end of her very deadly weapon. Then she yanked it out of her quarry's side; the whole audacious operation endured a fraction of a second. But the bear, her senses sharpened by her mortal distress, was also quick- surprisingly so for a beast of her size. Before Jangili could make a clean break and wrench the arrow free, a wide, heavy paw armed with five knife-sharp claws bore down on her face. She had to twist to avoid it, and as she did so, since the arrow was gripped tightly in her hand, it twisted with her and broke free. The bear growled in pain, her wound no doubt burning with the arrow's forceful change of position in her flesh. Jangili shuffled her feet and dragged herself backward, away from her stubborn quarry. Distance favored her once more now, as the trajectory of her arrow required… She gawked at her right hand in dismay, realizing that what she'd pulled out of the bear's side wasn't an arrow but a splintered stick. Her irregular and involuntary movement had apparently broken the arrow near the head. Her arrow was of the highest quality- she knew this for, dexterous fletcher that she was, she had made it herself- but it was designed to sustain linear, horizontal pressure during its flight and not vertical pressure as she'd just applied to it. She couldn't reuse it as an arrow, but luckily the tip had broken off just so, that the tapering edge could still serve to penetrate the bear's flesh and deliver a fatal wound if manually employed.

'Kubeba' (thus she called her prey),

'You're a lucky one, the Gods to you are kind;

But death you shan't escape today,

With arrow, spear, or my bare hands- tonight glory will be mine.'

            Distance no lingered agreed with Jangili, as her remodeled arrow was too light to be effectively flung as a spear. She had to come up close to her quarry and drive it into her flesh in full contact. Hardly was there anything more ill-advised for a hunter than to come in direct contact with a living, struggling quarry when bereft of the reinforcement of a viable weapon. But Jangili had her own set of rules, the most rigorous of which stated that there was no greater disgrace, and consequently nothing to be more tenaciously avoided, than a failed hunt. The definition of a failed hunt in this sense was that the quarry was possessed of life when the hunt came to an end. Not once was she tainted by such disgrace since she'd begun to hunt on her own, and she would allow neither the danger posed by a threatened bear nor the unwritten rules drawn up by the tribe's elderly to occasion a blemish in her spotless record.

            Alas the bear, having received a second taste of her huntress's sinister intent, adhered to and consequently was constrained by no rule but one. It was the same rule that governed the behavior and determined the mental state, and had done so since the beginning of time, of every quarry anywhere: survival. In keep with this one single all-important objective, and the inferior size and strength of her huntress notwithstanding, the bear ceased her void display of power and took to flight. On three good paws and a fourth limp one she ran faster than her huntress, who followed her to heel, but the pain in her side soon become insufferable. Once they'd cleared the thicket and converged on open grassland- the forest was a place of no one kind of landscape- she realized that safety, albeit temporary, lay not ahead but above. Of the various physical advantages bears hold over humans, perhaps none is more salient than the ability to climb trees. Our bear didn't linger and climbed up the trunk of a wide, majestic baobab tree just in time to stay beyond the reach of Jangili's stick. She found a branch thick enough to sustain her weight, which requirement the vast majority of the baobab's branches fulfilled, and settled on it, viewing her huntress from the safety of height.

'Oh bear, oh bear, a tree you climb,

How cunning, how crafty, how sly;

But on my side is my friend, Time,

Your grim fate shan't be denied.'

            Indeed, such a petty obstacle as two or three meters of height wouldn't serve the bear, nor would it serve an item of prey half as valuable as the furry beast, to deter the skilled huntress from pursuing her target. It did, however, require an adjustment in her modus operandi: her reach fell well short of jabbing her modified weapon at the airborne bear, while flinging it as she would a spear was no more practicable than it had been before; climbing the tree, a feat whose practicability was in itself doubtful, suitable more for a skilled climber than a master archer, would render her defenseless against any offensive that might be launched by her wary prey, which would instantly turn predator; and surely returning to the tribe for an uncorrupted arrow, although as swiftly as her nimble legs would transport her, would provide the bear ample opportunity to descend from her shelter and vanish into the forest. And so once again the circumstances begged her to employ the virtue of patience and wait. Only through one of two means would the stalemate between hunter and hunted be broken: either, hopefully the sooner to occur, a fellow tribesman would appear with the promise of salvation in the form of an effective weapon; or the injured bear would be compelled by her natural urges to return to ground level. In each of both cases the hunt would be completed, the disgrace of failure shunned, and the promise of glory realized.

            Several hours elapsed without either party advancing her position. The bear did attempt to test the waters on several occasions, but each time realizing that her huntress was too watchful to be circumvented, she resorted to the safety of the high branch. Jangili's vigilance never wavered, and to every bleat or grunt emitted by her prey she responded with a little chant, which reflected the obligatory respect of hunter to hunted:

'Fret thy soul not, oh mighty beast,

For your pain shall be oh-so-brief;

Tonight of you we'll make a feast,

And of your slayer a new Chief.'

            To such a degree was the proficient huntress certain that hunting down the forest's fiercest predator would acquire her honor beyond limits that when she finally saw a familiar figure loom beyond the trees she leapt with anticipation. It was no ordinary figure that chanced upon her, but that of Shoka, the wielder of the most deadly axe in the forest. With a single swing of his carefully forged weapon, if the rumors were to be credited with precision, he could slice a man in half from head to foot. By the same logic it shouldn't take more than a few swings, or at any rate shouldn't constitute much of a burden, to fell a mid-size tree.

'Greatest Shoka, you've arrived at last,

A miracle this must be;

Only one thing of you I'll ever ask:

Lend your skills and fell this tree.'

            But Shoka, who additionally to his heavy axe had the widest of hearts, lacked the sharpness of mind to match the sharpness of his blade. His comprehension of the situation was accordingly far detached from the truth.

'Jangili, dearest, you are divine,

A hunter and a savior;

To fell this tree with this axe of mine,

Each swing I'll truly savor.'

            And without ado he swung the massive axe over his shoulder as though it were as light as an arrow. But the fierce huntress would no sooner suffer her senior tribesman to render a service to her success under colors of beneficence than abandon the pursuit of her quarry. With haste she flung herself between axe and trunk, her midsection reprieved from a very bloody fate by but a narrow space.

'To save the bear? But why, I wonder?

She's the object of my toils;

Abet me to succeed to hunt her,

And her fur shall be your spoils.'

            Shoka swiveled his axe so that the blunt end faced forward, which ensured that, should the most uncanny of accidents take place, he be the one to suffer injury, or more precisely his back, rather than his interlocutor. He glanced up at the anguishing bear, who was clearly unsettled by his addition to the scene, and then at the avid huntress, and concluded:

'Her fur, so rich, so thick- to wear

A fine prize would be;

But between you, me, and the bear,

None needs it more than she.'

            Thus, aching with the pain of the bear and appalled by the notion of appropriating that which was dearest to her, the man who in a span of minutes could've felled the tree and brought the hunt to a successful conclusion refused Jangili's pleas and left her a trunk's length short of glory. The softness of his heart, not the force of his axe, was the wheel that steered his conduct in rough waters. He suggested that the illustrious archer quit her misguided hunt and join him on his journey to cut and collect firewood to alleviate the biting cold that night would bring. But Jangili, attributing his passive stance to tedium, kindly refused and they parted ways, each to follow the path laid down by their respective wants and desires.  

            The sun was at the height of its daily westward journey, but the sky was still bright and the land ablaze, when another familiar figure answered Jangili's silent beckoning. This time it was Mkuki, a blind tribesman whose liberty from the deceptive sense of sight made him a very fine spearman. So nice was his ability to assess his environment and sense what lay ahead that he could strike a target the size of an apple from 20 meters away, 40 if out in the open. Another virtue his blindness afforded him was exceptional foresight. Being free from the visual attachments of the present, his visions of the future were clearer than those of any seeing tribesman. Jangili was convinced that there could be no easier target for him than the immobile bear, and likewise no easier decision than to take advantage of the rewards it would bring.

'Mkuki, Mkuki, purest of the pure,

Your arrival is a blessing;

My ails you can this moment cure,

And you need not even your best fling.'

            For several moments Mkuki reserved his response, taking in his environment. The rustling of the leaves in the tree, the pungent scent of blood, the bear's heavy breathing and the anxiety in Jangili's voice painted a vivid picture in his mind's eye, where his vision was far superior to that of any tribesman.

'Young Jangili, strong and fair,

Your efforts are astray;

Why wish for the death of the bear,

And not for its health pray?'

            Jangili was taken aback by Mkuki's shortsightedness. His blindness of the gains to be made from the hunt fit him ill, but she was prepared to set it right. So firmly convinced was the ambitious huntress of the expediency of bringing the hunt to a completion that she believed it sufficient to simply lay down the advantages in plain sight. Mkuki's sharp vision would then lead him to subscribe to her position. The advantages were, to her- great pride; to him- a scabbard for his spear, fashioned out of the bear's skin and decorated with her fur as a trophy.    

'To dig such a fierce creature's grave,

A feat yet unachieved;

I'll be deemed bravest of the brave,

Your spear will find a sheath.'

            Mkuki cradled the spear against his side, demonstratively settling the sharp end, which had been known to carve deep through flesh, against the skin on the inside of his hand. Jangili started when the edge touched his skin, but she was mistaken to assume his blindness was at fault for it. There was, in fact, no fault to speak of.

'A spear of peace needn't a scabbard,

A true hunter has no pride;

But close your eyes and look right at her,

The bear has a soul inside.'

            It was in a very calculated manner that Mkuki concluded the benefit to be derived from the death of the bear not to equal, let alone exceed, the loss to be sustained. In her single-minded refusal to embrace his stand Jangili wondered whether perhaps his blindness did after all impair his vision, and consequently his sense of judgment. Neither did she yield to his firm attempts at converting her, in vain to the same degree as her endeavors to coax him to see the obvious. He wasn't the man she'd thought he was, but she placed no blame on him for it. How could one in constant darkness see that which is only seen, however plainly, in the light?

            Again she parted ways with the visitor, and again she remained in want of aid. Again the sun paid little consideration to her needs and grew smaller and dimmer in the sky, and again the outline of a human figure in the horizon revived her dwindling hopes of success. This figure approached more slowly and gently than the previous ones, and both this manner and the small dimensions revealed its identity long before it was close enough for any of its physical features to be singularly distinguished. Her heart bounced with excitement upon this revelation, as she had complete conviction that this last traveler would be exempt from the shortcomings of the previous ones and insusceptible to the misjudgments that had affected them. Wisdom was collected nowhere in greater a density than in this man's mind, and judgment was found nowhere so sound as in the decisions he made.

The Chief!    

'Gentle, prudent, wise Wakuu,

My awe I cannot hide;

What our tribesmen have refused to do,

Pray your kindness may provide.'

            Wisps of hair as white as clouds and skin as uneven as the splintered head of an arrow bore witness to the Chief's vast experience. A perfectly erect stature and a soft voice to which anyone would defer and hush to the sound of evidenced that he'd done well to learn the lessons his experience offered. A single glance at the scene through old, blurry eyes equipped him with complete comprehension of the situation- more so than any of the others. There was unease in his every motion- the result either the bane of seniority or his formidable discontent with the object of his comprehension.

'Heed me, dear girl, your heart is true,

Your every word I trust;

But one thing I'd never do for you:

Fulfill an aim that is unjust.'

            It was very much to her advantage, then, that no part of her current aim was tainted by injustice.

'This bear you see up in the tree,

The subject of my hopes;

If you may deign to help me,

You shall have the entire corpse.'

            The bear grunted above them, prompting an escalation in the Chief's unease.

'Not just a bear- she is a sow,

Soon mother of newborns;

If you can kill her with my arrow,

Her death I shall not mourn.'

            Chief Wakuu turned and allowed Jangili access to the quiver on his back. It was filled with arrows; ten or twelve blunt ends of finely carved sticks jutting out at an equal height from the top of the quiver. Jangili wondered at this uncanny proposal; not one in the tribe, least of all the wise Wakuu, should doubt her ability to dispatch the immobilized bear from such a distance with her favorite weapon. But rather than express her conclusion that the clouds of age were starting to affect his judgment, she randomly chose an arrow and studied it. Little had she expected, even less so did she believe it when she saw it, that not just the one but both ends of the arrow were flat. Surprised that the Chief's quiver hadn't been thoroughly examined and meticulously equipped, she drew another arrow from the bunch. Once again, no side tapered to a sharper end than the other. This ceremony recurred three more times before Jangili came to terms with the fact that these weren't defective arrows; the Chief's arrows were all flat. This cast a heavy shadow of doubt on his famous arching skills, which she inquired into at once.

'Your arrows are flat as the ground,

Can't even cut through air;

What is their purpose? My doubts abound,

They cannot kill the bear.'

            Surprise was absent from the Chief's reaction to her wonder. It wasn't for the tribe's eldest, let alone a young, zealous huntress, to recognize the merits of a flat arrow.

'Arrows not of war but peace,

They mean only to deter;

To kill brings far too grim a grief,

For an old heart to incur.'

            What a fabulous ruse! Armed with famous archery skills and the semblance of a quiver full of deadly arrows, the Chief- if the forest were ever to produce a man wicked enough to wish him ill- would be immune to any offensive attempt by members of a rivaling tribe.  As for the beasts of the forest, they were familiar with the image and danger posed by, and therefore scrupulously kept distance from, any man with a bow. In practice just about any adversary half the Chief's size or larger, man or beast, could with little effort prevail in any kind of physical struggle with the old man. But none did, and none had in decades. And still the cleverness of this offering of peace to the forest didn't dispel the haziness of his claims.

'Do we not kill-as does the wolf and the bear?

T'is part of nature's way;

For everyone the game is fair,

The strong one will prevail.'

            Then the Chief's response:

'We are not wolves, nor bears- we're blessed,

We're members of a tribe;

We never take a life unless,

 Required, it's, to survive.'

            For the first time since she'd picked up the bear's trail, Jangili's grip of her bow slackened. She felt she'd been confronted by a moral challenge that she didn't know how to overcome. The zealous huntress in her found its match in the form of an edified conscience. Was her own accomplishment worth the lives of mother bear and her cub? For, as the Chief had explained, the bulge in the bear's stomach and her general protective manner denoted with very little doubt her state of pregnancy.

            Wakuu instructed the young huntress to remain with the sow. Since she'd occasioned the sow's plight, she would now be bestowed the opportunity of extracting her from it. She was to remain at the base of the tree and allocate food from the supply that would be delivered to her to the hungry mother. At night with the sow's first snore, she was to pull the head of the arrow out of its side in hopes that given the chance, the wound would heal without requiring further attention. If all went well, by the turn of the following day Jangili would have redeemed herself with the sow and would be free to return to the village with a clear conscience and a lightened heart.

            The nuts and the berries that were delivered to the huntress-turned-caretaker were fed to the injured sow through different contraptions that Jangili devised using two of the Chief's flat arrows, which had been lent her by him for this purpose. The sow's initial apprehension quickly made way for complete readiness to maintain this partnership. With the exception of a short recess occasioned by Jangili pulling what was left of her arrow from the sow's side, which was the cause of no minor intensity of pain in the temporary tree-dweller, a rather peaceful relationship sprouted between the two. It came to a proper end the following evening when, having essentially recovered from her injury, the sow climbed down the tree. She didn't do so with haste or at a moment of distraction but as a bear would be expected to do in the absence of a threat to his or her well-being. In much a similar fashion, Jangili watched the sow reach level ground with her and approach to within lunging distance. They retained their former respect for one another, but one that savored of affection rather than fear or malice. They were never to cross paths again, and Jangili was left to wonder whether a single act of compassion was worth sacrificing a lifetime of glory. For no short span of time was she set ill at ease by this reservation.  

           

For the sake of reference let's assume that roughly a month had passed since Jangili's encounter with the bear when Zito was aiming her arrow at the unsuspecting wolf twenty meters ahead. Or was it thirty? She wasn't a very accurate judge of distance, as she was a judge of direction. In short, mastery of the art of archery evaded her, but she was possessed of a trenchant belief that her true abilities suffered an unjustly poor reputation. A pall of dishonor hung over her for this blatant underestimation, which she was determined to dispel. The requisite manner of redressing this iniquity, she concluded, was to pursue and achieve an unusually ambitious goal, a prominent instance of which would be to seek and hunt one of the forest's most dreaded hunters.

            There were two of the wild canines, one with its back to her and the other faced sideways- just at the right angle for the arrow to slice through its neck. A small target, a fair distance, a fearsome predator; this one instance of success would consign to oblivion any hint at her incompetence as an archer. And how could she avoid a few words of self-motivation before undertaking such a glorious venture?

'Poor wolf, employed in seeking pray,

But you must be confronted;

Your destiny shall change today,

From hunter to the hunted.'

            She was certain, gauging the trajectory of the arrow once it was in the air, that success was duly hers. Her target would be killed, its companion vanish timidly to the ends of the forest, and she would take her prize to the village to be rewarded with newfound respect. Reality chose to diverge from this planned course, however, and sent her arrow face-down into the ground one meter before the target wolf. With sharp eyes and a rather resourceful mind both wolves traced the stray arrow to its shooter, and stared at the poorly hidden Zito, assessing their enemy. They, too, formed a low estimate of her, and indeed and at once, hunter became the hunted. In the race that ensued the wolves were easily victorious, and not a minute into the chase they came within striking distance and Zito realized that running was pointless. She tried her bow as a shield but was disarmed by the first wolf; she attempted an arrow as a sword but found it of little use against the speed and power of the second. She screamed so shrilly as they bore down upon her that the whole forest shook, but there was no further recourse for her to resort to. She was soon on her back, fighting desperately and hopelessly as the hunters tore her flesh down to the bone. Soon she began to imagine all the wonderful things she was about to lose- the wonders of life in the forest, which in the absence of the threat of death seemed so trifling- and deplored her grim fortune. By the fall of night that day, much blood was drained in the forest.

            An hour later she lay in the sickbed, groggy and in great pain but above all consumed with surprise and gratefulness for being alive. The first words she spoke were, to the surprise of no one, in her panicked sister's presence. While biologically speaking, they weren't identical twins- not twins at all, in fact- their physical identity reached such uncanny levels that few were the tribesmen who could tell them apart by appearance. They even smelled the same, sharing a great predilection for a certain pungent lemony ointment that they applied to their fair hair daily. As it is well known that the greater the similarity between two people the stronger their connection, so the sisters' lover for each other was rivaled by their love for no one and nothing else. News of the unfortunate conclusion of Zito's venture into the forest had shaken her sister's heart to the point of breaking; had death rather than minor injuries been her lot, her sister's heart shouldn't have been able to bear the pain. And here were the words the frail younger sister uttered meekly to her older sibling:

'The wolves weren't so kind to me,

Nor me to them, to be fair;

But I had a savior, mind you Jangili,

T'was one brave and mighty bear…'

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 11.12.2014

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