Part 2 – Superstitious Cacti Get All The Girls
It must have been nerves. Bluster and showing off were, as Bellemar understood it, a daily routine with men in large groups. But even this seemed like an exaggerated version of the stories she’d heard. The men were far from home, on the eve of battle, and they spent their time carousing like schoolboys. She’d stumbled upon some kind of drinking game that she didn’t entirely understand. Someone would take a swig from a bottle of whiskey, then whip their lasso into an ongoing loop. The bottle would pass to the next man, who did the same thing. Eventually, at some signal Bellemar must not have registered, the whole group whooped for joy, and the bottle went back to someone who took an extra-long swig.
Bellemar turned from the game. She figured it must be their way of relaxing. Or pumping themselves up. She’d grown up with her older brother, but she hadn’t really ever understood why boys do the things they do. Most of it seemed pretty impractical.
“More impractical than hunting a river Nymph’s overdue child?” a little voice in her head asked. Bellemar sigh and begrudgingly conceded the point.
A small camp had been established in a little gulf of flat land. On all sides, hills of sand and rock rose to obscure the camp from prying eyes. Bellemar knew little about combat, even less about the desert, but the Cowboys’ leader, a self-congratulatory man named Jones, was confident this was a good place to make camp. Two miles south by southeast, well downwind, lay a settlement. In a day or two, when the weather kick up enough dust to cover their approach, the cowboys would descend on the settlement.
The child was there. She had been there for quite some time, though how she went from the nymph nursery on the coast to the rock-strewn desert is anyone’s guess. Her current hosts certainly didn’t do the deed themselves.
Sagu Aro Cacti were the pinnacle of desert life. They had thick, spongy bodies that sucked up water at breakneck speed. Their settlements were organized enough to discourage any predators, human or animal, from encroaching on their territory. And it was with little surprise that Bellemar had heard them described as prickly by more than one person on her trip out here. Clustered spines aside, the Sagu Aro were renowned for their isolationism and their distrust of outsiders.
Through the years, few human researchers had managed to ingratiate themselves into the cactus communities of the desert. Most of what they learned was very basic, slice-of-life information. Family life, spirituality, government – anything related to the complex interactions of the cactus people were still mostly unknown.
Except for one aspect, and Bellemar thought this the most material part of her investigation. The Sagu Aro are incredibly, overwhelming superstitious. The anthropologists who had managed some form of legitimate studies had come home with reams and reams of paper on their endless rituals and rites. And it was that thick, omnipresent cloud of superstition that Bellemar believed had led them to momentarily abandon their isolationist tendencies and kidnap a river nymph child.
She had spent nearly six months on the hunt. The Nymph hadn’t given her much to go on, and she’d had to rely on the half-truths of old legends and traditional stories to begin her search. Methodically, she’d collected every piece of information she could find on river nymph children. Interviews with people who’d allegedly seen them, transcriptions of stories, legends and songs from the people of the river lands, even a failed attempt to summon the spirit of a dead river Nymph with a shaman who was more enthusiastic than he was talented – she’d left no stone unturned. After months, the pieces had finally fallen into place.
River nymph children are incapable of controlling their watery abilities. The location of their nursery did not present itself in Belllemar’s search, but she learned they were reared in tidal pools in a place where rivers and streams meet the vast ocean. In that place, there is little damage they could cause with their frequent and unexpected water diversions and flash floods.
At some point in the last fifty years, a nymph child had reached the appropriate age to receive her waterway assignment. She left the seaside nursery in the care of a crane during their seasonal migration. This was how it had always gone, would always go.
Something went awry on the way. The crane never arrived in the mountains, among the headwaters of the river that ran, eventually, through the river valley that Bellemar had always called home. His fellow cranes searched for him, but no trace was ever found. He, and his charge, had vanished.
Bellemar felt this new path of uncovering truth was entirely becoming. She felt, for the first time in her brief adult life, like she was engaging in something with a purpose. That she could only uncover part of the truth of this particular mystery did not faze her in the least. Because the part she had uncovered would help fill in the gaps. The nymph had ended up here, in the desert, twos miles downwind, at a Sagu Aro settlement.
She rang the bell that hung by the main flap leading into Jones’ tent. A moment later, a gruff voice called out an invitation to enter. She peeled the flap open and stepped inside.
“Your timing is excellent, Miss Bellemar,” Jones said. He stood beneath the tent’s main post gazing down at a map of the desert stretched out on a table. It was incredibly detailed. Bellemar had early on learned how important accurate and detailed maps were to the Cowboy way of life. The desert held a monotonous beauty, and it was all too easy to become lost among the dull browns of sand and rocks and the tempting blues and green and purples of succulents and short, stumpy plants with incongruently beautiful flowers. Maps and water – those were the Cowboys only two lifelines out here, so far west of the river lands.
“When can we go?” Bellemar asked. She’d asked the same thing each of the last two mornings, since they’d made camp.
“When the wind kicks up.”
“Otherwise they’ll see our own dust cloud coming. I understand that,” Bellemar replied, reciting what she’d been taught on the trip west. “But when will the wind kick up?”
Jones shrugged. “I can’t call down the wind any more than I can make it rain.”
“I’ve been hearing a lot of that lately.”
“The Sagu Aro distrust dust storms.”
“Don’t they distrust pretty much everything?”
“Yes,” Jones admitted. “When it comes to dust storms, they seem to have convinced themselves that it’s a sign of coming rain. They’ll orient themselves according to their rituals for the best possible position to soak up the impending rainwater.”
“What happens when it’s just a patch of wind and no rain comes?”
“They blame one of their own for botching the ritual and spend quite some time arguing about it.”
Bellemar shook her head. She opened her mouth to ask how that helped anything, but stopped herself. It was a fool’s errand to attempt to apply logic to the possibly infinite layers of superstition to which the Sagu Aro people were apparently enslaved. She was once again on the doorstep of a new adventure waiting for the weather to turn in her favor.
That set off a little bell in her head. A flash of memory course through her, and she had an idea that might skirt the waiting game entirely.
“We’re planning to use their superstitions against them, to attack when they’re busy doing lord-knows-what to encourage or discourage the weather?”
“That’s right,” Jones said.
“So why attack at all?” she prompted. “Why not just tell them we need the nymph child or some mystery Bad Thing will happen?”
“I don’t follow…”
“Let’s tell them the truth. We need the nymph child to make up for the lost rain or, I don’t know, the world will shrivel into a dry nothingness.”
Jones shook his head. “They’re cacti. They like the dry.”
“Not too dry though. They need water same as me & you.”
“Yes, but much less.” Jones thought a moment, then added, ”Also, you’re missing a key element.”
“Which is?”
“They’re nuts! Their daily routines make shaman rain dances look completely practical by comparison. Reason is a feckless weapon against them.”
“Our form of reason, sure. But if they’re superstitious, they’ll have their own. Let’s use the truth, or most of it anyway, to appeal to that.” Bellemar felt increasingly sure this was the right way to go.
Jones shook his head. “It won’t work. And I can’t send someone down there by himself. Sagu Aro don’t like outsiders and every one of them is covered in deadly-sharp spines.”
Bellemar shrugged and turned to leave. “Alright. Guess I’ll go brush my horse a few more times.”
It was hot in the desert, hotter still in the tent, and Jones felt himself starting to slow down after sparring with the rambunctious, young river girl. He took a few sips of water from his canteen and settled onto the cot in the tent corner to catch a quick nap.
An hour later, he strode out of his tent feeling refreshed. Evening had begun to settle over the desert. Beyond the tent area, he saw the boys twirling their ropes. A new game had evolved since this afternoon. This one looked like a game involving creating and controlling the largest lasso loop. He walked over and watched for a few minutes. For no real reason, he looked back toward the tent grounds. Lanterns were already lit in every tent. Except one. Bellemar’s.
“You seen the girl?” he asked one of the cowboys standing next to him. The man shook his head. “Go knock on her tent, please.” The man began to walk over, but Jones realized he wouldn’t find her in there.
“Aw, hell,” he muttered to himself. He waved one of the young squires over and instructed the boy to saddle his horse. By the time the other cowboy came back to report she wasn’t in her tent, Jones was already strapping into his riding boots.
“Boys, sober up quick,” he shouted out. “The girl’s snuck off to parlay with the Sagu Aro. If we bring her back stuck with needles, it’ll be our heads rolling around the sand. Let’s ride!”
It took five minutes to organize themselves into some semblance of a posse. Then another three to trade out those that were too drunk for those with their wits about them. The group stormed up out of their campground. They ate up the distance between them and the cactus settlement in less than fifteen minutes.
Jones ordered a halt at the top of a little ridge just outside the settlement. The others pulled up around him, and he heard more than one burst out into laughter.
“What are these idiots…?” he began to ask, but couldn’t even finish the thought.
Below, Bellemar stood before a massive Sagu Aro cactus. She gesticulated wildly, pointing up to the sky, down at the ground, and making her finger dance as if to indicate a great deal of rainfall. Towering over her, a twent-foot-tall Sagu Aro cactus nodded what passed for its head. It had five huge arms bursting from its main body. Two of them were crossed across its front, directly above Bellemar’s diminutive figure. The other three waved vigorously at the gathered cacti beyond.
To a cactus, they were bent in half, arms stretched out, slamming into the ground over and over again. Most didn’t have the proper balance for this maneuver, and every few seconds one fell forward, flat onto its face. Bumbling and inelegant, the fallen cactus would right itself, shake off the cobwebs, and bend right back over to continue the ritual.
All around him, the cowboys laughed harder and harder. They couldn’t concentrate on making their lassos loop in their fits, and flaccid ropes dropped to the sand left and right. Jones shook his head in amazement, too shocked to laugh.
It was a foolish plan, but it worked. From somewhere Jones could not see, a short, stumpy Sagu Aro emerged with a blue-and-brown-and-gold figure that was even smaller than Bellemar. The cactus led the young river nymph child through the field of its ground-slapping fellows. The child hopped left and right, and an echo of laughter floated to Jones’ ears. She’d made a game of it, ducking and dodging and twirling around the huge, spike-filled towers of utter lunacy.
Moments later, the massive Sagu Aro that stood in front of Bellemar gave a nod and uncrossed its arms. It waved all five at the nymph child as Bellemar hoisted the girl onto the saddle of her grey horse. The river lands girl pulled herself up, surprisingly deft given her inexperience with horses, and trotted away from the Sagu Aro settlement, up the little rise to the waiting cowboys.
“How did you manage that?” Jones asked as she pulled her horse to a stop. Behind her, the young nymph peeked her head around, caught a fright at the sight of the cowboys, and buried her face in Bellemar’s back.
“I asked why they’d taken her in the first place. Evidently, the crane carrying her suffered some kind of illness on his flight. He landed to catch his breath nearby, never did, and the cacti came upon her. It rained, she started sloshing water all over town, and they-”
“Went nuts. Thought she was some kind of sign, and invented a million dances to do whatever it is they do.”
“Basically,” Bellemar replied. “I convinced them she was needed to fix a nearby river, but I guess the translation wasn’t perfect. I think they thought I meant she was going to bring a river here, to the desert. Then they stared the slapping the ground and handed her right over.”
“Every time with these lunatics,” Jones said, shaking his head in amazement. Below, the settlement was still a storm of ground-slapping, occasionally-collapsing cacti. “Can’t believe it was that easy.”
Bellemar slapped him on the back and kicked her horse into a trot. “The truth makes everything easier. Let’s get this girl to the cranes and then up to her new home.”
The Tall Tale Year 