The Woman Who Saved the Day
[vc_row][vc_column][title type="subtitle-h6"]Emma Wathen[/title][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="11/12"][vc_column_text]“What is that?”Cicada held the object under her grandmother’s nose. “A wheel.”Her grandmother, Natasi, tilted her head, giving the wooden contraption a cautious sniff. Cicada wouldn’t have been surprised if her grandmother tried to lick the thing next. “What is a wheel?”“I’m not really sure yet,” Cicada replied, “but I think it could be very useful. See how it rolls? Just imagine if we put four of these on a long board. If one of our kills were too heavy to carry, we could—”“This is not a wheel,” Natasi interrupted, taking the tree slice from Cicada and rubbing her fingers along its ridged edges. “This is a circle.”When Cicada had asked Leak what her face looked like, he said, “Like a circle.” Then she asked him what the sun looked like, and he squinted and, after a minute, started to cry. She hated that she hadn’t just punched him in the face like any of the other girls would have.“It looks like a circle, too,” he said, still not understanding.She put her hands on his cheeks and told him his face looked like a hollow tree trunk that sprouted uneven patches of moss nears its roots. When he smiled, she told him his face looked like a spider web swaying in the wind during a light afternoon shower. Then he kissed her, and she never did find out what her face looked like, besides a circle.Natasi’s face was not a circle. Back when she was born, it had been popular to wrap wet blankets around babies’ skulls to craft them into a conical shape, to bring them closer to the gods. Even though she was shorter than Cicada, the tip of her head always peaked above Cicada’s. That tip was beginning to look like a snow-capped mountain, with white roots springing up in the center, preparing for the avalanche down her skull.“It’s not just a circle, Grandmother,” Cicada said. “Maybe I should carve the middle out of it, so you can see better.”Natasi jerked the tree slice back. “No! You would destroy the circles.” “But it’s not a circle—”“Not the circle. The circles.” Natasi pointed to the thinnest tree ring on the wheel. “This is the year Eloxa put a piece of the sun on earth and gave us fire.” She pointed to a thicker ring. “This is the year Dagmar tried to flood the earth with her tears. And this—” She pointed to a dark spot near the edge. “This is the year you were born, Cicada.”The year Cicada was born, the forest was beset by a hoard of insects that devastated the local flora. Most people waited for the apocalypse to come. But Natasi said the gods were looking after them. She collected the bugs’ carcasses and fried them in the fire, saving the tribe from starvation. It was a miracle, she claimed— and she had named Cicada after it.Sometimes, though, Cicada thought she had just been named after the pests. Their faces were sort of circular too. And ugly.“Why do you want to destroy our history?” Natasi asked, holding out the tree slice.“We live in a forest. I don’t think we’re in any danger of running out of trees.” The truth felt like a lie on her tongue, so Cicada kept talking, trying to push the feeling away. “But aren’t you afraid we’re going to run out of history? You’ve said it yourself, Grandmother. The tribe was twice as big when you were born.”“Then maybe you should focus on giving your son siblings instead of making wheels.” Natasi plucked a sliver out of her finger. “Do not try to be a god, Cicada. Mortals are not gods.”She cast her eyes down, a not-so-subtle reminder that they were standing on the grave of Cicada’s mother. Her attempt to shame Cicada into submission was working. Then again, it was hard to be anywhere in their small village and not be standing on some ancestor’s grave. Their tribe had lived in this patch of forest since the beginning of time, always walking in the footprints of their ancestors. Walking, Cicada thought, not rolling.As Natasi walked away, Cicada knelt down and put her hand against the dirt floor. She tried to feel its history, as Natasi could. Instead, broken pebbles scratched against her palm, deaf to her language. Her mother’s bones might as well have been buried leagues away instead of six feet below.
When Cicada found Leak, he was peeing in a bush.He was also in the middle of a conversation with Monkey Face, who had a dead jaguar slung over her back.“Cicada!” Leak beamed when he spotted her. “Did you see what Face caught?”“For your son’s Naming Ceremony,” Monkey Face said, shifting the jaguar’s weight to her other shoulder. She would have had a much easier time carrying the animal, Cicada reflected, if she used a wheel. Said wooden contraption scratched against her own back, enclosed in the sack she often used to carry the baby.“Where is our son?” she asked Leak.Leak frowned, opened his mouth to call for him, then frowned again when no name came to him. “Son? Baby?”“If you weren’t already naming him tomorrow, I would,” Monkey Face said as the one- year-old crawled out from underneath the bush Leak had been peeing in. Her parents, too, had put off the Naming Ceremony. Which is how she’d ended up with the name Monkey Face.Monkey Face slunk away to parade her kill to the rest of the tribe as Leak scooped up his son. “What did you end up deciding on for his name?”Cicada was silent.“Come on. It’s not bad luck if you tell me!”In truth, she hadn’t picked a name yet. She had watched the sunset every day for a year, waiting for Eloxa to show her a miracle, something to name her son after. But the only miracle she found was the return of the buzzing insects.Well, that wasn’t entirely true.“Alright,” Leak relented, setting their son down. “We don’t want to spoil the surprise for the little man, do we?” He booped the baby’s nose, sending the boy into a fit of giggles.Everyone called him Leak because when he was born, he peed on his mother, even before he cried. In fact, he had a habit of peeing everywhere, anytime, without regard to his surroundings. He peed while spearing a peccary. He peed while giving tribute to the Rain Goddess. He even peed on Cicada once during sex. She had a feeling that was when their son had been conceived.Cicada pulled the wheel out of her sack and held it out to Bug Eye (her nickname for the baby). The one-year-old grabbed the wheel with his mouth and started teething it. Leak watched the one-sided wrestling match with an open mouth that quivered up and down with Bug Eye’s movements.“Leak, what does that look like to you?” Cicada asked. She almost expected him to say, “Your face.”Instead, he said, “A miracle.” Her heart jumped. Did he see it too? That was why she fancied him after all, because he saw the world in a different way. Granted, that was mostly because of what he didn’t see, or didn’t understand, but there was brilliance in his simplicity.“Our little miracle,” Leak continued, smiling fondly as Bug Eye started straddling the wheel, still gripping it between his teeth.Her heart fell. “I was talking about the wh— the circle.” Leak tilted his head. “It looks like fun.”“It’s not supposed to be fun,” Cicada protested, although she fought a smile, imagining Leak rolling around in the grass with the wheel between his teeth. “It could have serious uses, if only Natasi would listen to me. I swear, she’s still suspicious of fire!”“Me too,” Leak said, scratching at his uneven stubble.Cicada sighed. “You ever wonder how babies got their names before the gods gave us fire? I mean, how could we perform the ritual without holding the baby over the fire?”Leak stared intently at a patch of grass, as if expecting it to burst into flames.“The ritual changed,” she answered for him. “We changed. We took what the gods gave us and found our own uses for it. Spearhead used fire to give himself a brand. Do you think the gods told him to do that?” She shook her head. “I don’t see anything wrong with taking what we’re given and giving ourselves something new. I don’t need Bug Eye to live the same exact life I did.”“Bug Eye?”She blushed. “It’s what I’ve been calling the baby in my head.” “Bug Eye!”“I know; it’s a stupid name.”But Leak wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the viper sitting a foot away from Bug Eye. Cicada’s breath caught in her chest. She felt as if she were standing on top of a wheel that was slowly tipping forward, unable to move except to fall over the edge.She met Leak’s eyes and knew in that moment that they saw the world the same way. She was Mother, and he was Father, and Bug Eye could have any name in the world, except Snake Food.Leak made the first move, darting in like a hawk and snatching Bug Eye from the ground. As he did, Cicada yanked the wheel out of Bug Eye’s gums and swung at the snake. The wheel collided with its target, sending the viper flying.When she looked down, she found two fangs sticking out of the wheel, ripped out of the viper’s mouth. An image flashed through her mind of spokes and an axel, quickly overpowered by the thought of fangs tearing through her baby’s skin.Behind her, Bug Eye was wailing. Heart pounding, Cicada rushed to examine him for any wounds. But no— he only wanted his toy back.“You’re right,” Leak said, never blinking as he watched Bug Eye squirm in his arms. “The circle does have serious uses.”He handed Bug Eye off to her and went behind the trees to pee. She knew then that the encounter would give him nightmares for weeks.
Wandering so far from the settlement this close to nightfall was one way to get herself killed, but it was also the only way Cicada could come up with to think of a name for her son. If she returned the same place where she conceived her wheel, surely she could think of a worthy name for her son. Something better than Bug Eye. Better than Cicada.Eloxa had already begun to guide the sun underground by the time Cicada found the place again. Seated on the tree stump she had cut her wheel from, she could see the entire horizon, vaster than she remembered. As red turned to violet, she tried to count the number of tree stumps in the field but got lost somewhere in the two hundreds.No matter what Natasi said, Cicada knew the gods were guiding her invention of the wheel. Tree stumps didn’t just sprout out of the earth like this, rows of stubby knuckles sliced identically. When she’d first seen the field, she thought it was a sign of the apocalypse. That in itself didn’t particularly scare her— the apocalypse had happened twice already, according to Natasi’s stories. What scared her was that it had happened without anyone knowing. It was like the proverb about the tree falling in the forest, only worse. These trees hadn’t fallen. They were just gone. And who knew if they made a sound?But then she had heard a sound— a harmonic buzz, the first lullaby she’d ever heard. She looked up as a hoard of insects whizzed over her head. Cicadas. Ugly black shells with a song from tone-deaf gods. They didn’t seem particularly miraculous. Until one flew into her mouth.She’d never tasted a cicada before— it felt too much like cannibalism, and even Natasi frowned upon that— but she’d imagined it plenty. She imagined it would be like the time Monkey Face had tricked Leak into drinking his own piss. Or the time Spearhead had tried to swallow fire. She never imagined it would taste so normal. Not good, but not bad either, like drinking rain, but with a crunch.For the first time, Cicada had felt like she understood why Natasi had chosen her name. Maybe she had been an ugly baby. Maybe she was an ugly adult, too. But maybe there was something more, something that took a special tongue or a special pair of eyes to see.When Cicada had looked back down at the tree stumps, she had seen her wheel for the first time. Not as a finished product, of course. To anyone else, it would have looked like a regular tree stump, a little on the mossy side, but nothing to sniff twice at. But for Cicada, it was as if the world had suddenly become round. And it would, she had thought, once the tribe saw how useful her wheel was. There would be more wheels on the ground than cicadas in the sky.She had, of course, forgotten that all the cicadas would vanish from existence in a few short days.Sighing, Cicada now watched the rows of stumps vanish from view as darkness fell. She was no closer to a name for her son than she had been months ago. She wasn’t even sure she had come here looking for a name for him at all, unless Tree Stump was a viable candidate. No, she was still trying to make a name for herself, even when it had been decided long ago.She was about to leave when suddenly, the sun burst back into the sky. Only it wasn’t sunrise— there were no reds, or yellows, or blues coloring the sky. The moon still shone above, just starting its monthly blink. In fact, now that Cicada’s eyes had adjusted to the brightness, she realized that the new sun wasn’t in the sky at all but rather was hovering on the horizon, getting steadily larger. Moving towards her.She started running in its direction. As she got closer, she began to hear it— no one had ever heard the sun before! Who would have guessed it sounded like crunched leaves and heavy panting? It would attract all sorts of creatures if it weren’t careful. Then again, who wouldn’t notice a sun in the middle of the night?Cicada stopped in her tracks. Surely she was foolish to think this miracle was intended only for her. Someone, or something, else was bound to notice. In fact, she could see now that she wasn’t alone. Just beyond the light, there was a shadowy figure who trailed behind the sun— no, who moved with it! Eloxa.Cicada ducked behind a bush, disbelieving her eyes. She had reason to. Eloxa’s head should have been conical, like Natasi’s, and her eyes should have been little suns. This shadow did not yet have eyes. The head, as far as Cicada could discern, was as circular as hers. Its skin was strange, or at least Cicada thought so until she realized that what she was looking at wasn’t its skin but peculiar adornments that seemed to stifle the arms and legs. This shadow was not Eloxa. It was a man.And he was holding the sun in his hand.Cicada held her breath, not daring to make a sound. Not that the man could have heard anything over his own breathing. He seemed incapable of being stealthy. And yet he had stolen the sun. How?The cicadas were back, buzzing above her. Their lullaby was different this time, accompanied by a strange echo, sort of like a hiss.Like a viper.Before Cicada could register what was happening, the stolen sun’s beams pierced her face. The man cried out, dropping his sun. At his feet, the viper sunk its fangs into his ankle, avenging its crushed tail. Cicada paid it no attention. She was too busy racing for the sun, praying that she could grab it before it set the earth on fire, praying that she wouldn’t be the kindle to its flame.Her fingers tightened around it, and she felt a sudden jolt. It was… cold. Smooth and cold and not circular at all. A cylinder that caged a speck of the sun within. Cicada stared into it, like she had told Leak to, but it didn’t make her cry. She had the feeling it should have. Just like the man writhing in pain beside her should have. But it didn’t.Her fingers found a switch on the side and flipped it. She almost dropped the device when the sun flickered out. Comprehension dawning, she flipped the switch again. The sun turned on. Off, on. Night, day. She made a year go by in minutes. Maybe the dying man’s life flashed before his eyes as well. It didn’t matter. Mortals are not gods, Natasi had said. This man was no god. And he hadn’t stolen the sun, either.Once she was sure the stranger was dead, she retraced his steps. She didn’t need his “sun” to show her the way. The man’s careless trampling had left clear tracks, even in the dark.The stumps, too, were one of his tracks, she realized when she entered a nearby clearing. The vanished tree trunks sat in neat stacks, stripped of their bark. Sitting by them was a huge contraption, made of the same material as the false “sun.” When Cicada turned the light on to get a better look, she froze. Then turned the light off.It was her wheel. Not her wheel, exactly— it was bigger and smoother with identical ridges on the edge and little holes on the inside. In fact, it wasn’t her wheel at all. It never had been. Just someone else’s dream, from many suns ago.Who was to say the real sun was even a sun at all, and not another of the man’s inventions? Maybe he had built the light in his hands, and sent it to the sky, long before Eloxa had given birth to the day.Eloxa. Perhaps the only thing the tribe had ever actually invented.Cicada pounded her hand against the stranger’s wheel and, for the first time, she thought she could feel its history.
Daybreak was coming soon, for real this time. Cicada used the dead man’s arm, slung over her shoulder, to wipe the sweat off her brow. She didn’t think a wheel would have made this journey any easier. She’d already divested the man of all his clothes, anything that could indicate he wasn’t from a neighboring tribe in case the body was discovered. It was true, of course— he was from a neighboring tribe.Without his clothes, the stranger didn’t look any different than the tribesmen, save for some strange marks on his chest surrounding an image of a red parrot. She didn’t have time to ponder their meaning as she dumped his body on the ground and started digging. Her fingers raked up clots of dirt, but she didn’t bother trying to feel the history underneath. From its perch on a tree stump, the man’s light guided her hands, motivating her to go faster.There was a choked gasp behind her. In a smooth motion, Cicada grabbed the light from the stump and aimed it at the intruder, afraid of what she would find.It was Natasi.Cicada froze, unable to lower the light. Its bright hue made Natasi’s skin look shades paler. At least, Cicada hoped it was the light. Natasi had always been old, but not frail-old, old as in full of more life than everyone else. More life than the stranger lying at her feet. His light didn’t show that. It saw the world in a different way.“Cicada,” Natasi whispered. “What have you done?”She was not staring at the body but at the light shining in Cicada’s hands. Cicada swallowed and thought of the bug from earlier. Her namesake.She knew what to do.“This man stole the sun,” she said, matching the tone Natasi took when telling one of her stories. “I need to go return it to the sky before the moon is gone. Do you understand?”Natasi’s head bobbed up and down, although Cicada couldn’t tell if it was a tremble or a nod.“He needs to be returned to the gods,” Cicada continued. “Would you do it, Grandmother? Could you bury him?”Natasi took a cautious step forward, avoiding the beam of the light. Cicada held her breath. She could see the first hints of blue on the horizon. If she didn’t leave soon, the sunwould rise, and her ruse would be up. The tribe would be faced with the truth she now knew— if they didn’t accuse her of trying to be a god.“You saved the day,” Natasi whispered, a smile breaking over her face.Cicada lowered the light so Natasi wouldn’t see her frown. True, this man could no longer turn their village into tree stumps. She had saved the day. But what about the week, the month, the year?Then Cicada realized Natasi meant the sun. “Yes,” Cicada repeated. “I saved the day.”
As the sun set the next day, Cicada found Leak stabbing her wheel with a spearhead. She grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing?”“I’m making history,” he said.“What do you mean?” She thought of the holes in the stranger’s wheels. Had Leak followed her tracks and found the man’s camp? Did he know what it meant?If he had, he hadn’t understood, because he was smiling. “Natasi says the trees tell us stories,” he said. “So I’m making this one tell your story.” He held up the wheel to show her his masterpiece. Etched on the edge, near the two viper fangs, was a circle with two triangles. It reminded her of the marks on the dead man’s chest. Even then, it took her a moment to realize what the etching was supposed to be.“A cicada.”She’d been right about Leak. There was brilliance in his simplicity.Cicada laughed. “This is why you pee all the time, isn’t it? To make your mark.” He stared at her blankly.She took the wheel from his hand. “We don’t need this story. I already know where it leads.” Glancing over at where Natasi was preparing the fire for the Naming Ceremony, she found another use for the wheel: it was excellent kindle. The smoke it produced looked no different than the rest of the wood.“Now it can help us build a new future,” she told Leak, grasping his hand as the tribe started to gather around. “Like it did yesterday.”Leak squeezed her hand, his spider web smile flickering with the flames. She never wanted to see that smile under the beams of the stranger’s light.Natasi held their son over the fire. “What is this child’s name?” Cicada stared into the baby’s bug eyes and found his name. “Wheel.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]