Project Aspire

Chapter 15 - Amanda (Written by Taran Matharu)

The hands that bound me were rough and hurried, knotting the lianas around my wrists and ankles with practiced ease.

My throat was raw from screaming, but I was silent now, for each sound I made was rewarded with a swift punch to the jaw. The meaning was clear: Silence was the rule of the jungle.

They hung me from a pole like a trussed up turkey, carrying me underarm so my head hung inches from the ground. Before I had time to speak, they were loping through the jungle at a dizzying pace. I saw no faces, only lean, naked, bodies and mops of shaggy hair.

Even as my heart hammered in my chest, the scientist in me could not help but examine the differences in our physiologies. Or rather, the lack of them.

They were all men, half a dozen of them at most. Leaf woven loincloths hid their genitals, but the musculature, bone structure, even the arches of their feet, were all identical to a human’s. For a moment I dreamed I was back in the Amazon, running with the Amanye in the dappled shadows of the forest.

They moved fluidly through the jungle, making barely a sound as their flat feet padded over the mulch of leaves on the ground. I could see blowpipes, held like fishing rods over their shoulders, with clubs hanging from their wrists on tightly braided loops.

They looked like they were at war rather than hunting. But these did not look like the strange, humanoid creatures that Eric had described. They were of a different sort altogether.

A twinge of fear gripped me as I wondered why I had been captured and not clubbed to death. Grateful though to still be alive, the fact that they were all men did not bode well for me.

I struggled against my bonds, but they were well tied. All I succeeded in doing was cutting off circulation.

Finally, when I thought that I would scream, just to feel something, anything, they dropped me to the ground.

The group had stopped in front of a wooden palisade, made from thick logs over eleven feet high. I could see heads looking over the top, but through my tear filled eyes they were nothing but fuzzy blobs. 

The palisade parted, revealing gates that had been built into the wooden walls. Feet stomped in the mud, then I was turned over. I blinked in the glaring white of the sun: the canopy had fallen away. Silhouettes surrounded me, like football players in a huddle.

“Where did you find her?” a gruff voice asked. I knew I had gone mad then. Hallucinations, they were the only explanation. Language cannot evolve identical to another, not independently. There was no evolutionary niche for that.

“She was with others, inside the pyramid. Their warriors are strong and killed many Cainites, so we did not face them. This one was alone. We took her,” one of her captors replied.

“Bring her in, gently. She is not an enemy,” The voice ordered.

Faces. So many faces, men, women and children. They stroked my jumpsuit as I was carried again, curious at the blue fabric.

“Sky woman!” children shouted, “She is the mother!”

“Let me go,” I croaked, “I am a friend.”

But the words were lost in the maelstrom of noise as the chant was taken up. They called me sky woman, for I wore clothing as blue as the sky. Perhaps this would save me. But who needs saving from hallucinations. Was this what madness felt like?

Finally, darkness fell over me as I was take inside somewhere. The ties were cut and I fell to the ground. I cried out as I hit my bruised face on the wooden beams.

“Leave us,” The leader ordered. I heard feet tramping, then a door closing. Silence.

 “Do you see me?” he asked, lifting my tear-streaked face with a leathery hand. There were slits above the doorway, casting thin beams of light into the room.

 “I see you,” I said. His face was old and creased, but his eyes were bright blue and fiercely intelligent.

 “Who are you? Why did you come here?” he asked, fingering my auburn hair.

 “We crashed,” I said stupidly. I could barely think. This was real and it made no sense. Nothing had made sense for a long time.

“What kind of God allows herself to be captured?” He continued. “They do not speak of you or your kind in the scriptures.” 

I stared at him dumbly. What was he talking about? Scriptures? God?

He sighed and pushed me back to the ground.

“Takeshi! Bring the relics!” he shouted, banging on the door with his fist. “We shall see if she is a child of Tiamat.”

Takeshi. That was a Japanese name. Why would that name be used here. And Tiamat, I recognised that name as well. The evil god of the Mesopotamians, who was cast out by a younger God, Marduk. One of those strange recurring legends that always crop up in ancient religions. The Titans cast out by the Olympians, the Egyptian God Set being usurped by Horus.

The door slammed open, interrupting my thoughts. 

“Captain Peter, we have them.”

Three men entered the room, carrying a litter. Inside, there were a pile of rags, pages and twisted metal.

“Captain Peter?” I breathed, my had spinning. This was getting stranger and stranger by the minute.

“Touch them,” the Captain said harshly. “If they burn you, then you are of Tiamat. Then we will burn you. So it is.” 

He grabbed my hands and shoved them into the pile. His eyes widened as I winced, then realised it was only because of his tight grip. He relaxed his hands and allowed me to paw through the so-called relics.

The metal was rusted, but I could make out a hinge in the nearest piece. It was advanced metalwork, far more advanced than what I had glimpsed in the village.

A friend at Cambridge had once told me of a story, about an undiscovered tribe  from an island in the Pacific Ocean, who had come to worship Americans as Gods in the Second World War. Their planes, advanced technology, guns, food and medicine had elevated their visitors to deities. I was beginning to understand what might have happened.

“Tell me, Captain Peter. Where did you come by these relics?” I asked respectfully, laying the metal fragment down with exaggerated care.

“They were our forefathers’ from the first days. Now they are ours.” Captain Peter said proudly.

“So Tiamat, he fears these relics?” I asked curiously.

“He does not fear us. He fears Marduk. We are the children of Marduk, so he lets us live. But he watches. Sometimes, he sends his own children to fight us. Always we win. He does not want to kill us. Just to watch.”

My mind ran back to the strange, humanoid creatures that Eric and Cole had described. Were they the children of Tiamat?

“Why are you called Captain?” I asked, watching his baby blue eyes flicking from my pale, delicate hands to my auburn hair.

“I lead, so I am Captain. So it was and so it will be,” he said, picking his teeth with a fingernail.

I turned back to the relics, confused. Something caught my eye, a faded symbol, stitched into the cloth. It almost crumbled as I shifted it into one of the beams of light that lit the room.

It was unmistakeable.

D. A. R. K

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