And look at the reception they’re getting! Here’s Bunnoo and Thrompin and the kids. And they are all merrily booing and shouting out abuse, along with all the other huthi and children all along the wall.
“What sort of town put you little weaklings out to spread its seed?” they shout out.
“Call yourself men? You’re just huthi kids who haven’t had enough to eat!”
“No way are you going to get near our Mothers!”
Some folk even throw things down: bits of crust, little stones… Even young Karl is doing it, look. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that quite soon he’ll be out there himself.
And look how the young Wanderers stand there taking all of this! Poor mites. Twenty of them, facing the population of an entire town. Hungry too. When people threw down food scraps, some of the young Wanderers went to pick them up and eat them, at least until the older ones reprimanded them.
Ah, now this chap here was a sort of spokesman of theirs. You see he’s asking for silence so he can speak. It must have taken him all of ten minutes to get any quiet at all.
And here he is making his speech.
“Esteemed townsfolk of Formara. Open your gate to us please and let us visit your Motherhouse.”
Something like that, and as soon as he’s spoken everyone is catcalling and whooping and shouting out ‘In your dreams!’ and so on.
But eventually the leaders of the town go out of the gate. Here they are look: big fat huthi grandees in robes with their escort of huthi soldiers. They spend half an hour or so with the Wanderers, then confer among themselves. Finally the leader of the grandees turns and addresses us all on the walls. Look at her fine purple robes.
“Fellow citizens of Formara. We have met these boys and decided that we will open the gate for them tomorrow.”
Howls of incredulity and disgust all round.
“What?! These pathetic specimens! I’ve seen more life in a limp lettuce leaf!”
That sort of thing. Look at the faces though. It’s all part of the game. The Wanderers are never good enough. The grandees are always nuts to let them in.
Anyway, the grandee in purple holds up her hands again for silence.
“We will open the gate, but it will be for a gauntlet run only! We are giving these boys an opportunity, but they must prove themselves worthy of our Mothers.”
A gauntlet run! Wow! The crowd erupts! You’ve never seen anything like it. They were absolutely cock-a-hoop. And pretty soon the wall starts to empty as all the excited huthi and their foster-children run back down into the town to start getting ready.
Ah, here are some more of those bowava balloons. I don’t quite know how they got in here.
The toilet? Yes of course. It’s upstairs and straight across the landing.
And now this is the build-up for the run.
You see all the huthi are jostling for space on the street outside their houses, trying to get a good position for themselves and their foster-children. These are Bunnoo and Thrompin’s neighbours and their kids. We loved that little girl, didn’t we Lydia? Five years old. Look at that grin! That’s a basket of tomatoes she’s got there. Her big sister has got a bucket of mud.
Here is Bunnoo, look, with her big stick, limbering up gleefully for the sport.
“Boy are there going to be some sore arses when I’m done!” she chortles.
(Yet you couldn’t imagine a milder, gentler person than Bunnoo.)
Ah, and here are Karl and Kara, look, together as usual, with a big sack of vegetable scraps. Thrompin there has some rotten eggs. Everyone seems to save up rubbish especially for these occasions.
Here’s a view of the whole street. It’s all a big party for them, a gauntlet run, it’s like a carnival.
Here is Karl again. Oh no sorry, it’s Kara. The two of them are so alike!
Down below meanwhile, the soldiers have done a bit of scouting around to make sure there aren’t more Wanderers hiding out there somewhere, ready to make a surprise attack when the gate is opened. (That’s always the worry. The Wanderers will take over a town, murder the huthi and set up with the Mothers. After all, no other human society has such a thing as huthi! Remote as Apirania is, they are dimly aware of that.)
Once the soldiers were satisfied there wasn’t going to be an attack, the town grandees gave the order, and they let those twenty Wanderers in. We were halfway up the hill, but we knew at once when it had happened because of the shouting that went up.
Pretty soon afterwards the first of them appeared. Here he is look. Poor kid, he was already covered in eggs and tomatoes and so on, not to mention bleeding from his head. And here is kind gentle Bunnoo if you please, running out to hit him with a stick and grinning all over her jolly face. Then more eggs and tomatoes and a whole bucketful of mud. And everyone shouting out that he’s not a proper man at all and you’d need a magnifying glass to see his… Well, you get the picture.
(He gave up pretty soon after, actually. He stopped and walked back down to the gate. No-one harasses them when they’ve given up. Someone by the gate sorts them out with food and a jug of beer and a pat on the head before shoving them back outside.)
But here’s the next one. A bit more determined looking, isn’t he? And the one right behind him was pretty determined too. He was the oldest of them and their spokesman the previous night.
Ah, this is another one who gave up.
“Well done, lad,” goes Thrompin, who five minutes earlier was telling him he was the most pathetic excuse for a man she had ever seen.
“Better luck next time,” says Bunnoo.
Poor kid, he was crying.
Only about ten of them got as far as where we were. The rest had already given up. As soon as the Wanderers had passed them all the kids would run up the narrow little steps between the houses that are a shortcut between the loops of the road so as to get ahead of them again. They wanted to chuck a few more eggs at any Wanderers who got to the top, and to see them go in at the door of the Motherhouse, if any of them got that far.
Only two actually did. The spokesman and one other. Here you are, look. (I ran up after the kids, you see, and managed to catch the moment when the door opened for the second one. Lydia wasn’t quick enough, to her great chagrin. Not quite as young as we were, eh, Lyds?)
It’s an imposing building the Motherhouse isn’t it? Like the keep of some medieval castle. They hung out those green and red flags in honour of the occasion. Green for fertility, red for blood I believe. Right up at the top there you can see some of the older Mothers looking down over the battlements. The younger ones are confined inside.
Here’s a closer shot. You can see that the gauntlet continued right up to the door. Got worse in fact. Those are huthi soldiers there, poking this boy with the butts of their spears.
I know. He’s really bleeding quite badly.
But as soon as the door opened the jeers turned to cheers. A couple of young Mothers were in there to greet him and lead him off to wash him and tend to his wounds. You can just see him there. It’s a bit dark I know, but there he is, looking forward to a week of banquets and pampering and sex with every Mother he wants, before he has to go back out again onto the plain.
No, it’s not a very good shot I’m afraid. Everyone was pushing to get a view and I was being jostled. You can’t really get much sense of what it might be like inside.