Trade Negotiations
Admiral Biscuit
(For the EFNW 2017 Iron Writer Competition)
My ears perk as a cry of alarm goes up from one of the watchtowers. It is the afternoon, and there are not often predators who try to raid our village, but we are always prepared.
Already, I am galloping towards the palisade wall around our village, while Mother stays slightly behind, ensuring that I reach safety before she does. I am old enough that this bothers me slightly, and yet, I still take comfort from it.
Inside the walls, stallions and colts are arming themselves with spears and taking up their positions along the wall.
I see Takudzwa, my older brother, as he trots smartly up the ladder to one of the watch-towers, and I am proud of him. He is old enough now to stand watch by himself sometimes, and Masimba, our elder, has granted him the privilege of carrying a spear and defending our village.
My duty to the village comes before all else, so even though I am slightly curious, I carry my baskets to the village hall and wait patiently until Zuri has emptied them. Already, there is gossip that it is a pride of lions, perhaps, crouching in the grass, but I do not believe it. I can see with my own eyes that the warriors along the wall are looking skyward, and my heart feels heavy. Our sharpened palisade keeps the lions at bay but is no defense for rocs.
I nuzzle Mother, who is still waiting to empty her baskets. I can see she is worried; she does not know if my two sisters have safely made it inside from our fields and I want to tell her not to worry, that they are safe, but I am not sure if they are. They must be; they have longer legs than I and can gallop so much faster.
I know that I would be in the way if I were to climb up to the walkway along the wall, so I do not, but I cannot help but watch as I make my way back to our house.
My eldest sister Anopa is there, baking flat bread on our stone hearth, and she greets me with a nuzzle. I begin to help her, taking comfort in the familiar motions of kneading the dough. My ears keep flicking off to follow the sounds in the village, though, and she sees, and tells me that there is nothing to worry about; I am home and I am safe.
But Mother does not return home, not for what feels like a very long time even though we made only two more loaves of bread.
And then she tells me that we are all to come to the wall in turn, and look.
Anopa goes first, and Mother brushes a bit of flour off her coat before she leaves. Then she frets over me and I try to focus on the bread but I cannot, and the loaf comes off the stone burned a little bit on the bottom.
Before I am ready, Anopa comes back in and she smells the burned loaf and I see her ears go back and I hang my head in shame, but she does not chide me. I cannot tell if she is angry for it, and that worries me. In my heart, I want to be outside where I can gallop across the plain and escape whatever threat is coming, and I can tell that Mother is thinking the same thing by the way her hoof scrapes across the dirt floor of our house, digging grooves through the reeds that we have spread across the floor.
Go to the wall, Zakia, she tells me, and I do not want to but I am almost a mare now and I shouldn't be scared, even though I am.
I have not been allowed on the wall before and it feels strange to poke my head above the wooden logs and see down from above. Everything looks smaller from above, and our little fields are closer than it seems from outside. I do not understand how this can be, and yet I can see it with my own eyes.
One at a time, zebras are climbing the ladder to the watch-tower, and before too long it is my turn. Danai is there, and he is very brave. His coat is covered with scars from when he fought a lion, and I wish one day to be as brave as he is.
He is holding Masimba's telescope, and he motions for me to come to the edge. I take the telescope with nervous hooves and he instructs me in how to use it to see the sky. At first, it is no different than using my own eyes, but as I sweep around the sky all of a sudden I see winged ponies right in front of me and I step back alarmed. I do not know how they got so close without my hearing them, and Danai laughs and tells me that they are still quite far off.
I give him back the telescope and look and I can see them as tiny little specks in the sky, like distant egrets.
It takes them hours to arrive, and by then everybody in the village has had a chance to look at them through the telescope. Some of the mares go back out to their fields, but we stay inside and prepare a feast. The hall is swept out and fresh new reeds are put down, and I gather some flowers which grow in little gardens around the palisade. Their blooms are sweet, and they fill the hall with their perfume.
My eyes are constantly drawn to the sky, and as they get closer I can see them clearly with my own eyes. They are different than us—they have no stripes. Their coats are sky-colored and flower-colored and I do not think that they would fare well against lions and tigers because they are too bright.
They wear no jewelry, nor do they wear the lacy bridles of the Saddle Arabian ponies. I cannot see any adornment on them at all, and I cannot guess what they want.
Perhaps they are just passing overhead, like a migratory bird. There are only three of them, and they do not carry weapons, so I feel that they are no threat to our village. Just the same, I wish that they would pass by without stopping. They can have the sky—I do not want it.
They do not pass by. They circle over our village and then come down lower and I hear a shout along the wall, but I do not need to be warned. I trot back to the gate and the safety of our village. On my way in, I am passed by our soldiers, and I bow my head in respect. Takudzwa smiles as he passes me.
The pegasi have retreated back outside of our walls. Perhaps they do not trust us, or perhaps they respect us. They have gathered bits of cloud together and formed them into a big clump and then they sat on that. Every now and then, I can see a muzzle peek over the edge. I wish that we could make outposts in the sky because then lions couldn't sneak up on us.
I am too small to be allowed to meet with the elders, but I listen outside the hall just the same, along with some of the other fillies. The winged ponies are pegasi, which are perhaps the offspring of rocs and ponies. They are envoys from a distant land which is north of the great sand sea and around me I hear some zebras laughing about this but I do not. The sand sea is crossable, and perhaps even easy to cross with wings. Perhaps the other fillies and colts did not notice how much closer things looked from the walkway along the wall, but I did and I wonder if perhaps from the air they can see all the way over the sand sea. Maybe it is not as wide as I thought it was.
They want to trade with us; they want to take the tea and the sisal and the pyrethrum that we grow and there is much debate because the Saddle Arabians want those things as well and they trade us salt and metal plows and the soft gold that we make hoops out of and we do not know what they might offer in return, or if the Saddle Arabians will be mad if we trade to anyone else. Masimba says that it is not like trading to another village but this is different. Tanaka says that if there are more of them perhaps they could guard our village from their clouds and then some of the stallions and colts could go outside the walls and not have to protect the village any more and then there would be enough that we could still trade with the Saddle Arabians.
Zuwena, who is very old and very wise and remembers when Masimba's sire's sire was the leader, says how can we trust them to protect our village. They are not like us, and maybe they do not even know what a lion looks like. She says that the soil of our lands is not in their veins, and the hall falls silent and I think that that is the end of the discussion, and start to make my way back to our house.
But then Zawadi says that we should still see what they have to offer and that there is no harm in negotiating and we should discuss it in the arena and there is a big cheer from inside the hall and I hear hoofstomps and then I do rush back home so that Mother will not know that I was listening outside even though I wasn't supposed to.
Anopa knew that I was out but there is a smile on her muzzle when I return, and pretty soon my other sister Zahara pokes her muzzle out of her room and so I tell them what I have heard and they promise not to tell Mother that I was spying. And I curl up on my bed of reeds and even though I am excited for tomorrow I am still nearly asleep before Mother comes back home.
Although in the morning it seemed like it was a dream, when I look outside the unnatural cloud that the pegasi brought is still there, its bottom lit orange like the sunrise. We eat a quick breakfast of grains, and Mother frets over Takudzwa. Anopa gives him a blessing and half a loaf of bread, and then he trots off to the guardhouse to get his spear.
By the time the sun is above the tops of the acacia trees, all the warriors in the village have gone outside to the field south of our village, which is the arena where we treat. Masimba comes last, following Zuwena in, and they stand in the center and wait for the pegasi to come down.
I am pressed into service carrying in tea for the negotiations, and so I respectfully carry a pot full of hot water, trying to keep the steam out of my eyes.
It is hard to listen sometimes because while I am curious about them, I also must serve my village, and be ready with the hot water when it is needed. But I learn that the pegasi have strange names like Hyrax and Virga and Derecho, and I learn that sometimes it is boring to negotiate because it seems like everyone just keeps saying the same thing over and over again. The steam from the teapot is hot against my muzzle and the sun is beating on my back and I wonder if it took as long to negotiate with the Saddle Arabians and if we would have to do it again. I hoped we would not.
The sun was high overhead and I had gotten two fresh pots of hot water before Masimba finally relaxed his stern look, and then all of a sudden there were smiles on every face. The warriors thumped the butts of their spears against the ground and I hurried forward to pour a fresh service of tea to celebrate.
I stayed in the field and I watched as the pegasi flew off, back north towards the sand sea, and as I walked back to the palisade around our village, I thought about how the world felt a little bit smaller now than it had yesterday.
Author's Note
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