Awareness is an odd thing. One is tempted at all times to draw a fine, bright line between the time when there was no awareness, and the time where there was. Unfortunately, awareness is seldom so neatly defined. Even in the most extreme cases, there is a disconnect between when reality reveals itself and the mind recognizes and accepts that reality. Think of the crash victim who recalls the violence of an accident as something he witnessed rather than experienced, or the cuckold spouse who has all the evidence of unfaithfulness before him, yet cannot comprehend the betrayal.
By my loose reckoning it required nearly half a millennia to understand what I was and even longer to fully accept it. The evidence was there almost from the very beginning, but I was too addled, too primitive in my thoughts and emotions to comprehend my uniqueness.
Consider the following:
I came in to consciousness naked, swathed in furs, uncomprehending as an old woman bathed a wound in my scalp. She spoke to me in gibberish. All of this is very simple, very primitive- I had no language, no internal dialogue with which to make sense of what I was experiencing. The memories are jumbled, almost abstract- impressions of occurrence rather than narrative recollections. I remember Gtochk, the sour odor of thin brew on his breath, rolling me to my back, dumb and uncomprehending as he opened my thighs and taught me the first lesson that would guide me in my relationships with men for nearly three thousand years. I must have learned that lesson well for he named me his Precious Flower and kept me by his side for many winters despite my fruitless womb.
Gtochk’s people told tales. From them I learned that I was taken in a chance encounter with a wandering band, but the details were sparse, or else my recollection is poor. When famine threatened I was sold to another clan where my existence was more wretched as there was no one man to protect me, but I was desirable so I could survive by playing on the lusts of the younger men.
That which made me acceptable to men made me despised amongst women, but I was a hard worker as well and able to ingratiate myself to some small degree, deflecting the worst of the animosity by taking the most arduous and unpleasant tasks without complaint. It was always a selling point when I traded hands for my childlessness could not be concealed: no one willingly parted with healthy and desirable woman unless she was barren. I was sold as whore and beast of burden many times over and it never occurred to me to resent it. It was the way of life for me.
The first hint came the day an odd traveler guested in the roundhouse of my master, a man small and swarthy with a lilting cant to his voice. I was sent to entertain his bed for he had found favor with our chief and shaman, no small feat at a time when strangers were habitually slain. In the dwindling light of fading firelight, in the idle talk after pleasures taken he asked my age and I could not tell him for I could barely count beyond my fingers and toes. He taught me the basic skill of counting (incidentally doubling my value in years to come) and I totaled the winters I could remember, then lied and told him thirty-three because one hundred and thirty-three seemed a ridiculous number. Even then I understood instinctively that honesty would not serve me well in that regard. To be unusual was ill advised.
A second clue. For the first time I was turned out in to the cold of winter- food was short, I was a luxury, and there were no buyers. I knew enough of the basic skills of survival to find shelter and fire, and I did not starve though there was little of nourishment to be found. I slept through much of that time, rousing only when fortune brought some prey close enough for my sling to fell. When spring arrived I knew better than to seek out those who had abandoned me to the wilderness. I struck out on my own and passed ten winters in solitude- the first of many such interludes over the centuries. By then I was counting myself at nearly three hundred and I wailed to the sky, pleading to know why. What had I done to deserve such misery?
A hunting party gathered me in, a fair bit of prey for their entertainment. I could have eluded them. Perhaps I could have killed them as I had become quite skilled with my small bow. But I hungered for the company of people, even for the brutal lust of men, and in the end they were not so brutal, being amenable to my charms. I entered again in to the dangerous game.
I knew I was older than anyone I had knowledge of. There were myths and tales of ancient ones, but they offered nothing to me. Those of legend had power, what had I but a comely form and a strong back? Every new clan, every new cult, and every new god I preyed to, sacrificed to, pleaded with. I sought deliverance, and end to this pointless existence. Yet it never occurred to me to deliberately attempt to put an end to my life by my own hand. It was just as well.
The final clue, the one that crystallized my understanding, came after many decades of dwelling with people. Another terrible winter after a terrible harvest. The man who called me his own led me out in to the wild in the company of one of the elder women and I thought I was to be turned out again. I had seen this coming of course, so I had a good idea of where I would go, but something was wrong. He was tense, far more upset than I would have expected and the woman, Katka, radiated a certain malevolent pleasure that I at first attributed to my departure- she despised me, and she was a vicious, vindictive sort.
“Far enough,” she said, and I looked to my man, then gasped as Katka’s wiry arms seized my own, drawing them up and back behind me, “This is the end of the trail for you!” she laughed in my ear.
“I don’t understand!” I cried, but then I saw the blade. I looked in to his eyes; saw his unhappiness, his determination as he reached for me, pulling open my cloak and my tunic to expose my chest. I smiled at him. “It’s better this way,” I whispered, “strike true.”
I could feel Katka’s disappointment. She had so wanted to hear me beg for my life. I trembled in fear and excitement, an intensely sexual thrill coursing through my body as I lifted my head, arching my spine to offer a clearer target. I could feel the conflict rising in him, but Katka broke the spell.
“Do you expect me to hold her forever? Do it!”
“Makta!” he cried, and his fist lunged forward, plunging the blade in to my chest, the edge perpendicular to my breastbone, entering inside the curve of my left breast, seeking and finding my heart in an expert stroke. It did not even hurt; rather it drove the breath from me, my chest collapsing inward from the force of the blow. Breath would not come and my knees buckled as Katka released me, letting me drop to my knees as he stepped back, drawing the knife from my chest. Vision wavered as I saw crimson stained snow, then I could support myself no longer, falling forward in to the cold and darkness, a throbbing, pulsating roar of sound filling my ears as their voices receded. I embraced the darkness, welcomed it, invited it to envelope and consume me, erase me, make an end to this, to everything…
Cold and pain and aching pressure in my chest dragged me from the embrace of the nothingness I craved. My body shook and I could feel the thin stream of air torturously drawn in to my lungs, slowly filling me with breath, then a wracking, agonizing coughing exhalation; thick, vile goo spitting from my throat, fouling my mouth, forcing me to full awareness. Hands sought purchase, trembling arms lifted me and another breath entered me, much easier now that the clotted blood and mucus had been expelled, then made its exodus in a scream of rage and anguish. I probed at my chest with numb fingers- the wound was barely perceptible.
Cold, and starving, and betrayed I tried to stand, but slipped and fell back, landing across a frozen hump in the snow. Rolling over I struggled to my knees, feeling fur under my bare hands. Uncomprehending I swept aside the snow to reveal… Katka? She was on her back, but her head was twisted, her neck quite emphatically broken, shock frozen on her face. In my state I was unable to appreciate the irony of it all. I began tearing at her clothing, stripping the furs from her frozen body, wrapping myself in a desperate attempt to shelter myself from the biting cold. And through it all the gnawing ache in my belly grew stronger, more insistent, a scent touching my nostrils through the dry, frosty air: tantalizing, intoxicating. Raw meat.
“I don’t think so!” I shrieked in to the coming darkness. Not that cannibalism was new to me: it happened, on occasion. But Katka, and uncooked? No.
Forcing myself to my feet I sought my bearings and set out west… but stopped after only three steps. I could not think, could not force my feet to move, my body trembling violently as the hunger became like fire within me, warming me even as it sapped my strength further. I felt under my garments for the knife I had secreted there what felt like an age ago. I drew it out and turned- Katka’s body lay stretched out in the snow.
After all, what difference did it make? He had left us to be food for beasts. I sank down beside the body- once the decision was made I wasted no time. The knife bit in to the frozen meat of the thigh, cutting, tearing at the tough flesh until a strip came free. The first mouthful was the hardest. The meat was grainy and tough, and so cold it was tasteless, at least at first. After that it did not matter what it tasted like: I fed like a starved animal…
I had a small cave in mind- easy to seal off from the wind, if not terribly roomy, and far enough from the village to avoid being detected. I dragged Katka’s carcass behind me, my mind fixed solely upon my destination and reaching it before dark. The sky cleared offering bright moonlight to make the last leg of the trek possible, but the temperature plummeted as well. The cave was south facing, really just a depression in the hillside, but I had spied it years before and any time I had a chance I had done my best to prepare it against need: there was wood and flint and soon there was a fire.
Katka’s frozen, colorless eyes regarded me from the edge of the circle of firelight.
“You don’t know how lucky you are, old woman. And how did you wind up dead, anyhow? Did you put him up to killing me? You always hated me, so I guess that’s probably what happened. I’ll bet you just laughed a little too loud, and now there you are, and here I am. You know, if I could give you back your life and take your place out there, I’d do it. But since I can’t… if it’s any consolation, you taste terrible.”
The fire snapped and muttered at me, only just blunting the bitterness of the winter night. I was alone in a way I had never truly allowed myself to understand before. When he produced that knife I was so certain that finally, finally this would end. Instead here I was, with only flames and the dead for company.
Posted on September 1st, 2003
Filed under: Immortality, The Past | 7 Comments »