A yellow-striped beetle crawled along the wooden branch that Neeko’s elbow rested on. The sticks that composed their cage varied in size, but leaning against them stretched his back in a way that he needed to after a night sleeping on hardened dirt. He reluctantly flicked the beetle away with his counting finger and then leaned his head back once more.
“If we’re going to escape,” Pais’ca said, her rough voice hushed. “We’d best do it during the day, when the hunters are gone.”
Neeko looked at her wordlessly. She was hardly being sensible. Their cage was built between two tents, because of the lay of the land. The tribe appeared nomadic on account of the tents and rudimentary wooden structures they built. Trying to break free in broad sunlit view of the camp would surely get them caught before reaching any of the copses of trees in view.
He looked toward the largest of the tents. Each evening, he watched the chief hunters and crafters of the tribe take some of their meal into that tent. Whoever had commanded their captivity lived inside—Neeko was certain. Neeko hoped that person might be their medicine man, for he had seen no clear herbalist from his muddy outpost.
“Neeko?” Pais asked.
“We’ll come to an understanding,” he assured her. “No need to spring our cage in broad daylight.” If they were to run at noon, it would be ideal when one of the warriors took them to relieve themselves outside the camp. Due to the slope of hills adjacent the camp, they had been spared a stinking bucket inside their cage.
“It’s been three days,” Pais’ca said, nagging him to secure their safety. As though he could.
Neeko leaned his head back against the wooden branches again and waited for the evening meal.
Sometimes, a stern old woman brought their food and refused to spare them two words. Tonight, it was a hunter. He had done this service a few times, but Neeko saw him as the weak link. The man seemed curious, not just about their fears, but about their words too. This was an opportunity to learn what purpose had kept Neeko alive in their bondage—though he wouldn’t say it to Pais, he prayed it was not cannibalism.
As he tossed scraps of already picked-apart meat into the outreached palms of Neeko and Pais’ca’s hands, Neeko asked, “What does your paint symbolize?”
The hunter, who’s beard only partially hid the sky blue and brown-grey blocking that was painted across his chest, looked at Neeko with surprise. He frowned and shook his shoulders—he didn’t know the common tongue.
Pais blurted out a few words, and the hunter spoke two to help coax some meaning out of her gibberish. He rambled a reply full of ‘ree’ and ‘ak’ sounds, and Pais glanced back at Neeko. “To balance bright and dark, covered and shown.”
Pais creased her eyebrows, but Neeko nodded. The dual nature of the world, he thought, a common symbolism.
The hunter held up something pinched between his fingers. It was a little chunk of kibroot, no bigger than the man’s smallest fingernail. “Wak’arak sho?” the man asked aggressively.
Neeko blinked at Pais’ca. “He wants to know if we stole it,” she asked. “We didn’t.”
She repeated her answer back to the tribal man. She shook a hand to support her vague grasp on their guttural language. He pursed his lips and then asked something else. It was too quick, so he dragged out each syllable of a repetition. Neeko looked at the firelight behind the man, crackling with warmth that could ease the stiff knots in his shoulders—if he could have reached it. Some other hunters, around the fire called at the man jeeringly and he turned, replied, chuckled, and turned back to Pais. When at last he communicated his next question, she looked at Neeko at a loss. “I think he is asking,” she hesitated, then nodded, “what they took from us in exchange?”
“Knowledge,” he said, quietly.
“Trades are for old men,” came his reply, through Pais’ confused translation. The hunter started to turn away, popping the kibroot into his mouth as he did. He strutted away nonchalantly.
“Trades for old men who do not wish to be old,” Neeko called after him; Pais rambled syllables over his words, trying to keep up. Neeko put his face between wooden bars and continued. “Men who desire to be young forever!”
The hunter barely even listened to Pais’ca’s scrambling words. He waved his hand back, over his shoulder, and rejoined his friends at the cookfire. Neeko sank down into the chilled dirt and let out his breath in a long sigh.
Pais turned on him. “Maybe we should be trying to bargain for a way free, not for your imaginary quest!” she blurted, but her anger at him couldn’t persist and she stepped back against her side of the cage. When Neeko waved a hand for her to try her own luck, she started to shout at the hunters.
That got a reply. A different man came marching over, his big feet clomping the ground and leaving deep tracks. He reached the cage, then slid his spear’s shaft through an opening to smash Pais’ thigh and shove her down from the bars. Then he put his face to the opening, shouted something, and marched away.
When the pain of her new bruise subsided, the unfortunate guide looked at Neeko curiously. “He said, ‘we can do it sooner, if you don’t want to wait for the sign. Stay quiet!’ Do what?”
It could have been any number of things. Cannibalism once again surfaced on the rowdy waters of Neeko’s thoughts. “They won’t give us anything like this. We need to think of something to trade,” he muttered.
Pais slowly sat up properly and began to chew on the cold meat she had gained from the first hunter. “He said old men trade knowledge, so maybe we should try speaking to one of them?”
Neeko had only noticed three men in the tribe who were too old to join their hunts. None of them had ever come near the cage. “He said, ‘the sign’? Do you know what that might be?” Neeko leaned his face past the moss that covered the top of their cage, enough that he could see the stars. It was cloudy and had been frequently rainy. No signs could be discerned from overhead, aside from the moon, which had started to wane. He sat back down, crestfallen. His only hope, he imagined, was to explain how his knowledge could help the elders of the tribe, when they discerned such a sign and brought him before them. Of course, even that was an assumption, he realized.
Pais shrugged in response to his question, but she saw only his solemn silence.
Inside, Neeko realized, he was finally starting to lose hope. He would be stiff and rotten as an old log and still not have found his treasure. There were no signs that night for the tribe. Neither could Neeko find any.