Hannibal's Elephant Girl Chapter 10

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Hannibal’s Elephant Girl


by

Ariion Kathleen Brindley



Chapter Ten

I rolled away, thinking it might be Sakul in the hay beside me. I bumped into Obolus’ trunk, but then realized who the other person was. “Tin Tin Ban Sunia!” I cried and reached to hug her. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

The elephant raised his head to see what was the matter.

“Everything’s all right, Obolus.” I patted his trunk. “It’s our friend, Tin Tin Ban Sunia. See, she’s another girl just like me.”

The big elephant eyed the two of us for a moment, then laid his head down and closed his eyes.

“Let me look at your face.” I gently turned the girl’s head. In the moonlight I saw an ugly purple bruise and a black eye. Her split lip was swollen and discolored. “I’m going to kill that fat old man for doing this. Why does he have to be so mean to you?”

“Tin tin ban sunia?” she asked, pointing to the huge animal sleeping beside us.

“That’s Obolus, my friend. He pulled me from the river and then saved me from Ukaron, who tried to choke me. Like this.” I put my hands around my throat, rolled my eyes up and hung my tongue out the side of my mouth while waggling my head around.

She laughed and pulled my hands away.

“Did you escape?” I asked. “You know he’ll come looking for you in the morning.”

Tin Tin only smiled and patted the hay where we sat.

“It’s my bed. I like to sleep here, close to Obolus.” I leaned back on the hay. “Lie down like this and we can watch the stars.”

She lay down beside me. “Tin tin ban sunia,” she said and pointed to a star that seemed brighter than the others.

“Yes, it’s beautiful.”

There were lots of questions I wanted to ask the girl. The side of her face must be hurting and the back of her head too, where she had hit the tree. And the brand on her face—how she must have screamed when he burned that into her cheek. I wondered where she came from and how she learned to make the yarn and what language she spoke. She probably wondered about me too, asking herself where I came from and why I slept next to a big elephant.

I tried to remember where I was just three days ago, but very little remained in my memory. My life seemed to begin at the river, just before Obolus saved me from drowning. Why did those men throw me in the river? And who were they? I couldn’t remember. I only recalled being very hot and wanting nothing but sleep, and then Obolus’ strong trunk wrapping around me to pull me from the water.

“Tin tin ban sunia,” I said.

The girl giggled and snuggled close.

##

I awoke to bits of straw falling on my face. Obolus towered over me, working on his haystack in the predawn. I turned to see if Tin Tin still slept, but she was gone.

“Where did she go?” I asked Obolus when I stood and stretched my arms.

His big trunk came to me and wrapped around the back of my neck to rest on my shoulder.

I patted his trunk. “I guess she wanted to go before the fat man woke up and discovered she wasn’t there.”

I lifted Obolus’ trunk from my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” I turned to walk down Elephant Row.

Alongside the trail I found what I wanted: more of those food bricks. A pile of them stood behind a haystack halfway down the trail. I grabbed two and hurried back to Obolus.

He really liked those bricks. When he finished off the second one, he sucked up a drink from his watering hole and poured it into his upturned mouth.

“I have to go, Obolus.” I patted the side of his face. “I’ll come to see you later today after my work is done.”

He made a deep rumbling sound and kicked up some dirt with his foot. I wasn’t sure whether he meant to say good-bye or that he was still hungry.

##

I returned to the tent before Yzebel woke up, so I brushed ashes away from the previous night’s fire to uncover hot coals. I laid on twigs and leaves, then blew on the coals to start the fire. Once it began to blaze I added larger sticks and filled a pot from the waterskin and set it on the hearth stones.

Yzebel seemed surprised when she came out of the tent to find me working at the hearth. But then she smiled and took a deep breath of the fresh morning air.

“Let’s leave early to trade for supplies,” Yzebel said. “Then we’ll go see Bostar about the sapphire.”

“All right.” I pushed three large sticks of wood under the pot, stood up and brushed my hands off, ready to go.

The sun came up just after we walked past the end of Elephant Row and turned onto Pottery Trail. We were on our way to the barley man to see if he had any durum wheat.

“Have you ever gone to the city of Carthage?” I asked.

“Yes, but it’s a huge place with so many people rushing about. I only go there if I absolutely must have something I can’t get here.”

A two-wheeled oxcart came toward us on the narrow trail. An old man in a ragged tunic limped beside it. He popped his whip over the ox’s head. Yzebel and I moved off the trail to let him pass and I saw the pottery piled high in the cart. All the bowls, pots and jugs were decorated with painted ships, soldiers and elephants. A layer of straw on the bed of the cart cushioned them on the bumpy trail and he had stuffed more straw between the pieces.

We stepped back on the trail to continue on our way. “Do you like living in the camp?” I asked.

“I do like it. Here you can get to know a few people and make friends. In the big city, no one cares about others. Their only concern is how to separate you from your possessions. If you have nothing of value, then you are worthless to them.”

Beyond the potters, we came to a tanner. The smell of the place was terrible, like the odor of rotting meat, but Yzebel stopped to say good morning. His tent was attached to the side of a two-wheeled cart, but the wheels were spoked, rather than solid like the old man’s cart with its load of pottery. An awning covered his workspace to give him shade and several goatskins were stretched between the support posts to dry. A stack of thick ox hides lay behind him. He used a wooden mallet and a set of small iron punches to decorate a leather breastplate with a battle scene. The breastplate lay upon a rounded block of wood positioned across his thighs.

The man said good morning and smiled when he put his work aside. He stood and I was surprised to see he was not much taller standing than when he was seated. His thin legs bowed out and he had to look up at both of us. A woman came out of the tent and took Yzebel’s hands in hers.

“Good morning, Avani,” Yzebel said.

“And who is this?” Avani asked, nodding toward me.

“She’s Liada.”

“Liada? Prisoner of the Rock of Bysra?”

I smiled and nodded.

“That’s where I heard that name before.” Yzebel said. “It’s from the legend of Princess Elissa.” She glanced down at me and wrinkled her brow.

“Where did you get her?” Avani asked Yzebel.

Yzebel turned back to the woman. “She just dropped in at my tables the other day and decided to stay.”

“She will be a big help to you, Yzebel. You have your hands full with all those soldiers coming every night.”

Yzebel put her arm around my shoulders. “Could be,” she said and gave me a wink.

We left the tanner and his wife and walked past several more leather workers as the trail wound down a gentle slope and through a stand of carob. The long thin leaves of the huge trees rustled in the morning breeze.

“What is this hill called?” I asked.

“Cold Spring,” Yzebel said. “Because of the spring that flows from beneath a large stone on the other side. The water is always icy cold, even on the hottest day.” At the bottom of the hill we came to another path and turned left onto Weavers Trail. “Everyone in camp gets their fresh water from the spring.” We saw many people busy making cloth along both sides of this new trail.

“Where does all the pottery and cloth go?”

“Almost everything produced in the camp goes to the army,” Yzebel said. “Mostly it’s arms and armor, but the soldiers need other things, too. Clothing, bowls, food, tents, and anything else you can think of. What the army doesn’t buy goes down to Carthage. Then the merchants load all the goods on ships to take them across the sea to trade for gold, silver, spices, silk, and oxen.”

The number of people who knew Yzebel was amazing; she spoke to several along each trail.

We came to a tree-shaded square in the middle of Weavers Trail where about twenty women and girls, along with one man, were all busy at their looms.

One woman wove fabric on an upright loom while two identical girls took a large square of material from a vat filled with dyed water. The girls twisted the cloth between them to wring it out and then hung it on a rope strung between the nearby palm trees.

Along the bottom of the woman’s loom, heavy rocks pulled the vertical strings tight while she ran a shuttle back and forth crosswise, pulling the weaving yarn in and out between the weighted strings. Once she completed three or four rows, she used a bone comb to push the woven strands up against the preceding rows.

“Good morning, Yzebel,” the weaver said. She let the shuttle swing on its length of yarn. “Won’t you take some breakfast with us?”

“Oh no, Riona. We have to go to the barley man before he runs out of grain.”

“I see you have a helper today.” Riona smiled at me and seemed not to hear Yzebel’s words. “Kazza, Belala,” she called to her daughters. “Bring that goat’s milk and the butter you made last night.”

“Yes, Mother,” the girls said together when they finished hanging the red-violet fabric to dry in the early morning sun.

“This is Liada,” Yzebel said. “She is…”

“You and Liada sit there on that log,” Riona said, before Yzebel could finish. “I’ll see if we have some of Bostar’s bread left.” She swished the tent flap open and disappeared inside.

“Look,” I said to Yzebel when we sat down. I pointed to a basket filled with large balls of yarn beside the woman’s loom. I thought of Tin Tin with her spinning tool and how quickly her hands had worked.

Yzebel nodded. “That’s the yarn for Riona’s cloth.”

The balls of yarn were dyed yellow, brown and red. “Isn’t it beautiful,” I said, “how she uses the different colors to weave a pattern into the cloth?”

“Yes. It’s called crossbars. I wonder how much of Riona’s fabric we would need to make new dresses for us and a tunic for Jabnet.”

I glanced at Yzebel, wondering if I heard correctly. New dresses for us? I would love to have a dress made of Riona’s crossbar.

Kazza and Belala brought out a jug of milk and a large bowl of butter. Both the girls’ hands were stained that unusual red-violet color. The one carrying the butter handed it to her sister and ran to get a thick cloth to lay on the ground. Then they placed the milk and butter on the cloth. Their mother came out with the bread. All three of them knelt on the ground, the two sisters close to me with their mother across from them. The girls watched me while their mother cut the bread and spread a thick layer of butter on the slices. They seemed especially interested in my bracelet. Neither of them wore any jewelry.

“Kazza,” Riona said. “How are we to drink without bowls?”

The girl giggled and jumped up to fetch the drinking bowls.

“How is life at Yzebel’s Tables?” Riona asked. She handed a buttered slice of bread to me.

“It’s busy night and day,” Yzebel said. “We are just now on our way to fetch goat meat, barley, wine—. What else do we need, Liada?”

“Melons, groundnuts and we’re almost out of salt.”

“Everyone is running out of salt,” Riona said. “It’s becoming most precious.”

“Please, Mother, may I ask?”

“What is it, Kazza?”

“No, not Kazza, Mother,” the girl said and rolled her eyes to the sky. “I’m Belala.”

“Oh, one day I’m going to cut off an ear or a nose just so I can tell one from the other.”

I wasn’t sure if this was meant to be funny, but when the girls dissolved into giggles, I laughed too.

“All right, Belala,” her mother said. “Ask your question.”

“Where did you get your bracelet?” She still tried to stifle her laughter.

“Yzebel gave it to me.”

“May we look at it?” her sister asked.

I held my wrist out to them as I took a bite of bread.

They turned the bracelet to study it from every angle.

“Elephants!” one of them said.

“Yes,” said the other. “And look here, at the top. It’s beautiful.”

“Did you see the words?” one girl asked the other.

“Words?” She looked closer. “Yes, I wonder what the words say.”

“All elephants return to Valdacia,” I quoted without looking at the bracelet, “no matter how far they roam.”

Yzebel almost choked on a bite of bread. She took a drink of milk to clear her throat. “How do you know that?”

Before I could answer, Riona said, “Have you been inside the temple of Tanit? Are they teaching you to read and write words? I’ve never heard of a girl learning words.”

“No,” I said, “it was—”

Yzebel interrupted me, “She’s never been near the temple. Have you?”

“Oh, Yzebel,” Riona said, “guess who Belala saw coming out of the temple.”

“No, Mother,” Belala said. “It was Kazza who saw him.”

“Then Kazza. Where is my knife to cut off one of those ears? Kazza, tell Yzebel who you saw just yesterday coming from the temple of Tanit.”

Kazza glanced up at Yzebel and then at her mother who nodded, urging her to speak.

“Your son,” the girl said to Yzebel.

“Jabnet?” Yzebel said. “Coming out of the temple? But he couldn’t have gone there yesterday.”

“No,” Kazza said, “Not Jabnet. Your elder son, Tendao.”






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