pestle, which she had left and forgotten after her morning's work??ut where was the mortar? A knowledge of something, she knew not what, made her run to the alley by the guest lodge, the direction of the sound. What she saw there made her stop still for a moment in shock.
'Ansige? Ansige, is that you?’ she asked incredulously.
'Don't act as if you don't know me!’ he said, his voice muffled from the depths of the mortar and choked with tears of frustration. ‘You had to go and leave a bit of millet at the bottom of the mortar, and my head got stuck when I tried to reach it. I can scarcely breathe!'
'Don't panic,’ said Paama, a bit breathless herself with the strangeness of this scrape.
She ran to the court, muttering to herself, ‘Now what do I do? I am running out of bright ideas.'
She began to yell. ‘Help! Help! It is all my fault! It is all my fault!'
With such a good line, people could not resist coming to see who was blaming herself so freely. ‘What is all your fault? What is the matter?'
'Ansige is stuck in my mortar! I told him he had a big head, and he said no, he didn't have a big head, and I said, “I bet you can't get it into my mortar. If I put my wedding ring into the mortar, could you get it out again using only your mouth?” And he said, “Just you wait, I'll show you,” and then he put his head into my mortar, and now it's stuck and I'm to blame!'
The villagers looked at Ansige, listened to Paama's story, and burst out laughing. ‘Never mind, Paama. We'll get him out somehow,’ they said soothingly.
Perhaps it was unkind for them to laugh at him while he was in such a predicament, but no matter how you turned it about, who was the one at fault, the person who made the dare, or the person who took it up and came to grief? And wasn't this the third time in three days that they were running to rescue this man from some mishap?
Tasi and Semwe stepped out of the crowd and came up to their daughter. Tasi gave Paama a consoling hug and spoke quietly in her ear. ‘A good story, but you are still wearing your wedding ring. Take it off and drop it on the other side of me, where no-one can see.'
Paama quickly obeyed while all eyes were still fixed on the strange sight of Ansige cowering in the alley with his head encased in a mortar. As the ring fell to the ground, Tasi immediately covered it with her foot, all the while patting Paama's shoulder comfortingly.
After some of the villagers had stopped laughing long enough to consider the problem, it was decided to use an axe to get Ansige out, and this had him so frantic with worry that he embarrassed himself further by whimpering and flinching. Finally they struck off only the very bottom of the mortar, quite a distance from his head, and then gently split the round open using a chisel and a crowbar. Every hammer and chop had been magnified a hundredfold by the wood pressing on his ears, and Ansige was quite traumatised when they finally got him loose.
Semwe took hold of his son-in-law with a grip that was sympathetic yet surprisingly firm. ‘What a frightful experience! You must visit a doctor to ensure that there has been no permanent damage. Let me take you to the lodge and help you pack. The Makendha Infirmary is far too small to treat your case. We must get you to Ahani as soon as possible.'
Ansige followed Semwe without protest. In a bewilderingly brisk few minutes, he found that his belongings were packed, his bills settled, and a small crowd of villagers—some solicitous, some inquisitive, and some still frankly laughing at him—was escorting him to await the next omnibus to Ahani.
Paama watched him go, her arms folded and her lips folded as she listened to those who were quietly laughing and poking fun at Ansige. A wasp flew a time or two around her head, and certain ears would have heard it say:
'Look at him go! A fool to the last. No-one would think any less of you if you laughed at him, too, Paama. Go on, Paama! Beat the man down!'
Paama continued to stare at Ansige's retreating back. Behind her, half-hidden in the dust of the court, lay her discarded wedding ring. Tasi quickly stooped and picked it up, opening her mouth as if about to voice some reassurance, but Paama immediately turned away and walked homewards, not once looking at her parents, not once glancing up at the jeering insect.
Just outside the village, a pair of unseen observers exulted.
'Did you see that? She didn't hear it!'
'Or she heard it and ignored it.'
'Either way, she must indeed be the one to hold the Chaos Stick. They cannot influence her!'
'I'm glad you agree with me at last. Go arrange for it to be given to her as soon as possible.'
5
paama receives an unusual gift,
and a little girl visits dreamland
In the days after Ansige's departure, people were actually rather kind to Paama. When a woman leaves her husband and returns home for no apparent reason, there will be speculation, but after Ansige's display of gluttony-induced idiocy, no-one speculated any further. If anything, Paama was congratulated on having got rid of a burdensome spouse, and she was further respected because of her discretion and tact. Any other woman would have made a big fuss, or at the very least added her voice to the general mocking and ridiculing of the man and his deeds, but Paama seemed above all that.
'She will find a better husband some day,’ was the verdict, and with that, the gossips moved on in search of more scandalous meat.
Paama, who had never cared very much what other people thought, still occasionally added to the saltwater lake under the river stone, but now there was more of the sweetness of relief than the bitterness of failure in her tears.
She accepted that her life with Ansige was over, so much so that when someone came knocking at the door claiming to bear a message from Ansige, her first reaction was bewilderment.
'A message? Why? Did he forget something when he left?'
The messenger was travelling light, with only a small courier's satchel over his shoulder. He did not look equipped to return with anything of significant size, so she discarded the thought even as she voiced it.
He bowed and said, ‘Mister Ansige has sent me to ask you to return home.'
'Ask?’ Paama repeated, stunned.
Still inclined in that respectful half bow, the messenger raised his downcast eyes and met the flash of not- quite-humour in Paama's eyes with a irreverent glint of his own.
'Do you have an answer for him, mistress?'
'Do I? Oh?’ Paama strangled for a moment as her words tripped over themselves while the messenger straightened and eyed her with compassion. She took hold of herself and spoke with strained calm. ‘I am not going back. I am never going back, and he should know that. How dare he act as if? Is if I didn't know him! Let him find another wife. I am no longer interested in the position,’ she concluded with dignity.
The messenger bowed his head, a slow nod of acknowledgement. ‘We expected as much. Well then, on to my second duty. The old servants remember how pleasant you made Mister Ansige's household for those who had to work there. You have been missed.'
He paused to dip his hand into his satchel and withdrew an object carefully wrapped in silk. ‘We hope that you will accept from us this token of our thanks, and a remembrance of our sincere prayers that in the future you shall gain a better husband and a more blessed household.'
Paama took the narrow bundle, touched by the gift and the words that came with it. For courtesy, she unwrapped it there and then, so that he could carry back the tale of her delight and gratitude to the givers. When she saw what lay in the folds of ivory silk, she did not have to pretend to be awed. It was a stick such as one might find in any kitchen, the broad, flat kind made for turning meal to creamy smoothness. However, this one was made
