Isiuwa knows the Chief is right because he bears a cross on Isiuwa’s behalf, along with the troupe of Elders, sentries, and novitiates: the cross of going beyond the fence and seeking solutions, praying to the gods and asking them to stop moving the dunes closer. The troupe sometimes returns with strange things they’ve salvaged from the sand, things that look like they belong to another time, and the Elders keep them in the archive. The Chief reminds Isiuwa that this is not a privilege but a burden, for it is impossible to look upon the faces of the gods and live; and every time the troupe returns home intact is a blessing from the whistling gods. Isiuwa nods and remains behind the fence; remains grateful.
Not Nata’s Mam, though.
Nata’s Mam was born stubborn. She said so often herself, that it wasn’t wise to take things that came from the mouth of man, which confused Nata because those words came from her mouth. Mam lived by this practice too. Nata knows how many times Mam disregarded Isiuwa and slipped out of the fence (five). The dry bamboo barricade wasn’t really what kept Isiuwa in, Mam said. Bamboo was easy to slip through. Words planted in the mind, not so much.
Mam was an expert at that, the slipping; slipping through the fence, slipping through time and space, slipping in and out of proper reason, so that many times Isiuwa forgot she was even there, that Nata was even there. Isiuwa was surprised when they appeared, struggled to remember where they were from, wondered why they were still here and had not been offered to the gods already as appeasement.
It was easy for Nata and Mam to fade from the mind, being shunted to the edge, living in the outermost corner of the settlement where scorpions abound and only those deemed unworthy are offered land to build shelter. Nata blamed Mam in the beginning, believing it was her fault, that she could’ve just stopped arguing with the Elders, telling them that there were no whistling gods, that the civilization under the sand was just swallowed by an extreme ecological disaster. She insisted there were thriving civilizations out there and she was going to find them, that the whirlwind of time would take her there. She insisted she had seen it for herself.
So, when Mam kissed Nata on the forehead and said, “Let’s go,” she knew then that Isiuwa was right: Mam was a madwoman. A whirlwind that took people to a world where there was no sand? Going willingly into the dunes to be swallowed by the gods?
She refused to go, of course. Mam even tried to force her, after multiple arguments, them both screaming at the top of their voices in the shelter. Mam said she was just trying to save them, and Nata reminded her that Isiuwa was trying to save them, that was why they had rules. Mam saw then that Nata would never be ready, so she tied her wrists and ankles when she was asleep, gagged her mouth and put her in a cart, but she couldn’t even pull it from the shelter to the fence. She untied Nata, and Nata ran as fast as she could.
She went back to the shelter and waited for Mam to return because, of course, there was no whirlwind of time, there was no magical dust storm roaming the dunes, waiting for people to save. So, she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Until the dunes whistled.
We mind our own business, the Chief says to Isiuwa. We stay alive because we do not seek beyond our means.
Nata finds Tasé just easy. The small boy, scrawny, elbows like the edge of a box, eyes so sunken they could hold seas: he would never be found with the courtyard troupe. He was always somewhere else (and even when he was, he wasn’t). He is the kind of son Isiuwa thinks the Chief shouldn’t have; a sickling, eyes always to the sky in thought. It is probably best for everyone that he always takes off, always goes missing.
Nata finds him by the old, dead dwellings, the dump site of shelters of those from Isiuwa who have been taken by the dune song. Somewhere in there lie Mam’s best tools, implements, all the things she salvaged from the world before, which she refused to be allowed to be confiscated for the Elders’ archive. All these, alongside their shelter itself, which was hacked down to ensure it was never rebuilt. It would’ve been burnt if Isiuwa could, but fire is too dangerous a thing in these times.
Tasé squats right in the middle of it, his feet ashy, perched on some hard debris with a slate, writing on the polished surface with a white rock. He is the Chief’s only child, and his role in becoming a novitiate was written before he was born; he is going to be given the chance to be the future of Isiuwa. He does spend a lot of time with the Elders, mostly learning to scribble the shapes that represent Isiuwa’s language and sounds, but he barely ever spends time with the sentry group or the courtyard troupe. He is mostly alone, practicing.
Nata approaches slowly. He looks up.
“Will you come with me?” Nata says.
The boy stops writing, his eyeballs dancing in their sockets. “Where?”
“I’m going to find Mam.”
He pauses, then writes something on the slate, slowly. “Your Mam?”
“Yes,” Nata says.
He thinks for another second. “And my Mam too?”
Nata is silent for a beat. Everyone knows the stories about Tasé’s mother, about the Chief’s first wife. Isiuwa says she too was errant, was a madwoman like Nata’s Mam, talking about getting away to someplace else. Isiuwa says the Chief was right to let Isiuwa offer her to the gods beneath the dunes, to the breath of their wrath.
“Maybe,” she says.
He scribbles some more, lays down his materials, rises, and dusts off his buttock.
“Okay,” he says.
Nata has always known it would be this easy when the time came. Tasé was never really here. He has always lived somewhere else, but Isiuwa just can’t see it. Once, she asked him why he was only learning to write, and he said he was going to need it when he got away from here. It was then she realized he was just like her Mam, like his Mam before him.
“You know where to meet me,” Nata says. “Come after dusk, when the sentries are drunk. And don’t tell anyone.”
“Dusk?” he says. “It’s moonday. There’ll be whistling today.”
“Yes,” Nata says. “Exactly.”
Anyone who leaves belongs to the gods, the Chief tells Isiuwa. They shall not be allowed to return.
The first time, Nata didn’t make it far. She found nothing but sand and sun in all directions, the shadows cast by the dunes falling over her when the day began to wane. She found a few skeletons of people and animals, dried out, and a few artifacts she had never seen before, which she salvaged. Her water ran out. She did not find Mam, not even her dead body. She did not find a whirlwind to take her where Mam had gone.
The sentries found her when she returned to the fence. They swooped in, their foreheads shiny beneath their cloaks, faces long and lined and expressionless. They rounded her up without a word, because who needs words when the agreement is unspoken?
They did what needed to be done and paraded Nata through the settlement, carrying her in the carved ceremonial stretcher, offering her as a sacrifice, a warning, a performance of her chosen path to death, into the mouth of the gods. Isiuwa emerged from their shelters and flocked behind the sentries, shaking their heads sadly, whispering, pointing. They reached out to touch Nata, maybe in pity, maybe in solidarity, maybe asking, “Why?” The sentries whipped their hands off. They always returned.