The Girl Who Knew How Not to Die

[bruorton]

Long ago, when the sky was still close to the ground, two twins were born. The first burst from a coconut when the sun was high, so he named himself Anisweizu. The second emerged from a kudu’s blood that pooled on a stone worn into a bowl by the rain, so he named himself Pardenewa.

 

Pardenewa understood suffering, so as he travelled the world he considered how to make life easier. He sweetened whatever fruits he came upon, and softened the knife-sharp grass, and pushed around the stars into patterns that could aid travelers.

 

Anisweizu found this a silly pursuit. It seemed to him that life was already too easy. And so he began by tampering with things he thought too simple, or too convenient. He made streams and rivers flow only one direction at a time, instead of both, making them harder to travel on. He gave the fruits he found hard pits, or tough rinds. He teased the wind, always a gentle soul, until it became angry and confused and would every now and then throw a stormy tantrum.

 

But this was not enough for Anisweizu, because it seemed for every thing he touched, Pardenewa made something else less difficult. Finally, Anisweizu decided the way to win this contest was to think bigger. So Anisweizu began to dig. He dug down to the very edge of reality, and he wore the edge of it thin, and then he blew and blew into the thin place until it ballooned out and swelled up until it was almost as large again as the world.
 

He climbed down into this space and created another world there, an imitation of this one, but one where he could set all the rules. Finally, he created death to pull people out of the real world and down into his own, and he dictated that no one who died could ever, by any means, leave his world again. And there he set himself up as the Lord of the Dead, and soon his land began to fill up with subjects.

Pardenewa noticed that people had begun disappearing from the world, and baffled by the reason he became a vulture, flying high overhead, and he saw people being drawn toward a hole in the earth. He went down to investigate, and discovered that they had a new malady: death.

 

Pardenewa grew alarmed. Eventually the world would be empty, and once empty of people he feared everything else would be pulled into the hole. He knew at once it must be the doing of Anisweizu, because it was just like his brother to invent such a problem. So he went down into the Land of the Dead to find his brother, to try to bargain with him.

 

Anisweizu was finally enjoying himself. All his new subjects had to do whatever he said; if he said walk through the fire to bring me my dinner, they had to do it. If he said climb a needle tree to bring me its flower, they had to do it. And he was most delighted when he realized he could marry the most beautiful woman he wanted, and she could not refuse.

 

When Pardenewa arrived and saw all this, he wept. There was no way he could undo all the evil and suffering Anisweizu had created, for neither brother could directly reverse what the other had done. It seemed to him then that the world was lost forever. Everyone would have to die, and then suffer, and so everyone would dread death. He could see only one way forward.

 

So he came to Anisweizu and said, “Brother, only you can undo what you have done. I beg you to do so, or all the living will lose hope, knowing what awaits them, and give up on even trying to live.”

 

But Anisweizu only laughed. “I will only unmake my world if you unmake the one above, and we will start again together.”

 

This Pardenewa could not do; it was not in his power to unmake a world he had not made, and in any case he loved it too much. So he said, “I propose instead a contest, and the loser must either unmake his world, or die.”

 

Anisweizu was intrigued by the possibility of Pardenewa’s death, since that would put his brother in his power, but he said, “I have already given my terms; I swear an oath that I will agree to no other.”

 

Pardenewa was not as clever as his brother, but he was also not foolish. “But that oath is worthless. You are a known liar.”

 

Anisweizu grew angry. “I have never lied! If you can prove I have lied, I will agree to your contest!”

 

“Brother, it is this Land of the Dead itself that you have created which shows you a liar. You believed life was too easy, and all your life you went about making things more difficult. But in creating your own world, you made everything obey you, so that there is nothing here that is not perfectly easy for you.”

 

At this, Anisweizu was ashamed, for he saw his brother was correct, although it only made him angrier. “Very well, I agree to your contest! I propose we each take on a form the other proposes, I in your world and you in mine. Whoever can remain in that form the longest wins.”

 

To this Pardenewa agreed, and demanded that Anisweizu take the form of a ripe date, knowing that something would come along very quickly to eat it and Anisweizu would be forced to change back. Anisweizu returned by saying Pardenewa should take the form of a calabash gourd.

 

Thinking he had the advantage, Pardenewa did so, and Anisweizu went away. But he did not leave the Land of the Dead, and went instead to his wife and said he felt like a calabash curry and that she should go harvest one now and begin cooking. She had no choice but to obey, so she went and cut off the calabash, which was really Pardenewa’s head, and made a curry with it.

 

Of course, Anisweizu did not actually want curry; he just wanted his brother removed. Now that he could go about in both worlds freely, he left his wife behind and set out to do whatever he liked.

~ ~ ~

 

Now Anisweizu’s wife had a daughter who was not yet dead, but who had loved her mother very much. And when her mother grew ill and died, she had stayed by her side, and saw which way she went in death. She was bereft, and while the rest of her family did their best to console her, she began to miss her beloved mother so much, that she finally arose and went after her.

 

It was a long and difficult journey, for she was not dead herself, but eventually she came down into the Land of the Dead and found her mother, who had been enslaved as Anisweizu’s wife, and now abandoned by him. She longed for her mother to return with her to life, but there was no way to do this so long as her husband Anisweizu remained Lord of the Dead. So the daughter remained by her mother’s side, hoping her otherworldly stepfather would come home and some chance would allow her to kill him.

 

One day, she was sitting under the strange calabash vine by her mother’s house that never bore fruit, when she fell asleep. In her dream, the calabash promised her a child who would know a secret that no one else knew, if she would eat some curry made from its fruit. But how could she, she asked, when it never bore fruit? To this, the vine replied that she should ask her mother.

 

When she awoke, the young woman went to ask her mother about her strange dream, and in reply her mother showed her the curry she had made for the Lord of the Dead, but which he had never returned to eat. So the daughter ate a bite of the curry, and soon after discovered she was pregnant. At this discovery, her mother was upset and cast her out, for she was afraid of what Anisweizu would do if he came home to find her daughter there, alive and unmarried and pregnant.

 

Hurt and confused, the woman went and slept under the calabash again, and asked it what she should do. In her dream, the calabash replied, “You are not dead, so you do not have to remain in this world. Go back up into the world of the living, and bear your child there. They will soon leave you, but only to make the world whole.”

 

Following this instruction, the woman went up into the land of the living, and bore a girl child, who she raised on her own. She had forgotten how much brighter and easier this world was, and in her relief she named her daughter Sembarit.

 

The girl grew up to have the courage of her mother, and the wisdom of her father, and though her mother tried to shelter her, one day she told the story of her own mother in bondage to the Lord of the Dead. When she heard this story, Sembarit swore she would end her grandmother’s plight, and though it saddened her mother to do so, she told Sembarit how to find her way there, and bade her farewell.

 

Meanwhile, Anisweizu had come home from his wanderings, and begun thinking of how he could transform all the world into one like his own Land of the Dead. This was very hard work, and while he distracted himself by tormenting his subjects, he began to tire of such games.

 

And so when a woman arrived at his house in the garb of an entertainer, Anisweizu was delighted. This was of course Sembarit, who knew that the Lord of the Dead was clever indeed, and had come prepared. For having been conceived in the Land of the Dead but born into the land of the living, she knew a secret nobody else knew: she knew how not to die.

 

She began to perform for Anisweizu, inventing a new dance, which he insisted that she teach him, and she did. Then with a dye she had made, she invented painting, and decorated the wall of his house. He was astonished, and demanded she teach him this art as well, which she did. Then she invented magic, performing arts of arcane power, and this too he demanded she teach him, and she did so.

 

Finally, she said she would show him her greatest ability, but made him promise that this one he would not ask her to teach him, to which he agreed. Then, giving him a sword, she demanded he cut off her head. Amused and a little puzzled, he did so.

 

However, knowing how not to die, Sembarit simply picked up her head and put it back on her neck. At this Anisweizu was astonished, for he had created death and yet here was a woman who was seemingly impervious. At once, he demanded to know her secret, but she only laughed, and reminded him of his promise.

 

But he was so used to getting his way now in all things, that he disregarded his promise entirely and began to beg and plead with Sembarit, wishing to know how she withstood death, for part of him was also afraid that if she was immune, perhaps he did not have total control after all. But she continued to laugh and refuse until Anisweizu was beside himself with frustration.

 

At last he promised her anything she would ask of him, if only she would teach him her secret, and at last she relented. If he would release his wife, and let her return to the land of the living, she would teach him this secret. At once, Anisweizu agreed, for he did not in fact care very deeply for his wife, and in any case he knew that no one dead could return to the land of the living.

Sembarit then told him that her greatest trick was in fact very simple; all he had to do was hold his breath, close his eyes, and focus his mind on the last thing he had eaten. This way, his body would remember its way back to life, and death would have no power over him.

 

Following her instructions, he held his breath, closed his eyes, and thought back to his last meal. And while he did this, Sembarit took the sword and struck his head from his shoulders and killed him.

 

As Anisweizu died, Sembarit compelled him to make good on his final promise: in order to release her grandmother, his wife, he must allow his world and the world of the living to no longer be separate worlds, but come together as one whole. And so the Land of the Dead ceased to be separate, and merged back into the land of the living.

 

Of course all the changes the twins had made in the world remained and chief among these, to be sure, was death. But now the dead would never again suffer or be enslaved; instead they would return at once into the world from which they were born. And thanks to Sembarit, instead of slowly being drained away by death, the world would forever be renewed by it.