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Reconsidering the Folklore of Daniel JeanRichard
Portrait of Daniel JeanRichard (c. 1830) from Wikimedia CommonsThe history of Swiss watchmaking is filled with stories that blend fact with legend, and none is more emblematic than that of Daniel JeanRichard. Credited as the first watchmaker of the Neuchâtel Mountains, his story has been told for centuries as a tale of boyish genius, miraculous invention, and the birth of an industry. Yet when examined closely, much of what we know about him rests on a foundation of myth, embellished by chroniclers eager to celebrate a local hero. Still, beneath these exaggerations lies a deeper truth: JeanRichard was not only a craftsman of talent but also a figure who embodied the adaptability, resourcefulness, and entrepreneurial spirit of his region. To understand his legacy, we must first retell his story as it has been passed down, then place it in the context of his time, and finally consider his most lasting contribution—the system of établissage that defined Swiss watchmaking for generations.
The Legend of the English Watch
Daniel JeanRichard is credited today with establishing watchmaking among the resourceful but isolated farmers of the Swiss Jura mountains. According to tradition, the pivotal moment came in 1679 when a traveling horse dealer named Péter brought an English watch to La Sagne. Damaged on the journey, the watch was entrusted to young Daniel JeanRichard, who had never seen such an object before. Inspired, the boy supposedly set about building a similar piece from scratch, inventing the tools, forging the components, and finishing his own working watch within a year and a half. His neighbors, astonished by this feat, began placing orders, and JeanRichard soon became the first watchmaker of the mountains.
Daniel JeanRichard promises to repair a visitor’s English watch in this classic postcardThis tale was well-known in the 19th century, with the earliest telling attributed to Frédéric Samuel Ostervald’s 1766 “Description of the Mountains and Valleys that are part of the Principality of Neuchâtel and Valangin.” It has endured as the foundational legend of watchmaking in Neuchâtel and the Jura triangle, and is commonly repeated as fact to this day. But the inconsistencies are obvious. Depending on his (disputed) birth date, young Daniel could be as young as seven years of age and fourteen at most. Some versions say Péter first approached Daniel’s father, a gunsmith, who passed the incredibly rare and valuable object in the hands of his young son. Some suggest that Daniel or his father was a locksmith already adept at repairing clocks, while others suggest he was just a boy tinkering with metalwork. What unites them is the desire to portray him as a mechanical prodigy, the “spark” that ignited an entire industry.
Yet the historical record shows that watches were hardly unknown in the Jura at the time. Estate inventories from Le Locle in the 1660s list pocket watches alongside clocks, hourglasses, and sundials. By 1680, watches were common among the English bourgeoisie, and ties between Neuchâtel and England were already strong, with Swiss officers in the British army and Swiss pastors serving in London. It is plausible that a horse dealer brought a watch to La Sagne, but it was not the first watch ever seen in the region. And it is not at all incredible that a talented clockmaker and gunsmith like Daniel’s father, David JeanRichard, would have been able to repair a watch. The myth exaggerates the young boy’s involvement and isolation to emphasize his genius.
Daniel JeanRichard in Context
This colorized postcard shows the statue of Daniel JeanRichard, which still stands in the center of Le LocleEven if we subtract these legendary elements, Daniel JeanRichard’s career remains remarkable. Born around 1670 (various sources confidently claim 1665 or 1672), the son of David JeanRichard, who we know to be a master gunsmith and clockmaker, Daniel grew up in a household steeped in mechanics. His father repaired clocks, forged weapons, and even designed machinery for silk weaving. Such an environment provided the young Daniel with the technical grounding that made watchmaking a natural extension of existing skills.
Early records describe Daniel JeanRichard variously as a locksmith, goldsmith, and watch case maker before he was recognized as a watchmaker. By 1692 he was named a “master clockmaker,” and in 1703 an apprenticeship contract called him “honorable and expert Sir Daniel JeanRichard, master maker of pocket watches, Communier of La Sagne.” He lived for a time in La Neuveville, a town influenced by Geneva artisans, where he likely learned the techniques of small-scale watch and case production. Returning to Le Locle, he brought these skills back to the mountains, laying the groundwork for a local industry.
What stands out in JeanRichard’s life is his dual role as craftsman and teacher. Chroniclers name Jacob Brandt-dit-Gruerin (an auspicious and recognizable family name in watchmaking) among his apprentices, and many others soon followed. His influence extended through families such as Courvoisier, Perrelet, Jaquet-Droz, and Robert, all of whom became central to Swiss watchmaking. Whether or not he was the literal first watchmaker of the Jura, he was undeniably the one who trained and inspired the region’s future masters.
The Etablissage System
JeanRichard’s most lasting contribution was not the watches he produced but the structure of production he helped establish. The établissage system, which became the backbone of Swiss watchmaking, was a decentralized method in which different parts were made by specialized craftsmen (often working from their own homes) before being assembled by an établisseur.
This model fit perfectly with the social and economic environment of the Jura Mountains. Farming families faced long winters when agricultural work was scarce, and they turned to artisanal trades to supplement their income. Metalworking skills were widespread in the isolated region, and these jobs could be performed in cottages, often by entire families. The établisseur coordinated their work, collected components, and ensured the final watch came together. It was a system built on trust, cooperation, and the flexibility of part-time labor, which made it more adaptable than the centralized workshops of France or England.
A 1925 sketch by artist Eduard Kaiser showing a historic watchmakerJeanRichard, who himself began with multiple trades (gunsmithing, locksmithing, and goldsmithing) understood the power of dividing work into manageable specialties. His role in teaching apprentices and spreading the skills of case making, engraving, and assembly mirrored the way the établissage system would later function. In this sense, his personal experience foreshadowed the structure of the industry. He was not just a solitary genius but the nucleus around which an ecosystem of craftsmen organized themselves.
A Teacher Who Inspired An Industry
The tale of the horse dealer’s watch and the boy who invented horology from scratch is less a factual record than a symbolic tribute to the ingenuity of the people of the Swiss Jura mountains. Yet when placed in context, Daniel JeanRichard’s true achievements are no less impressive. He inherited a mechanical tradition from his family, absorbed new techniques from Geneva artisans, and established himself as both a craftsman and teacher in Le Locle. More importantly, he helped shape the établissage system that allowed watchmaking to spread through the Jura, transforming the economy of the mountains and laying the foundation of Swiss horology.
JeanRichard’s genius lies not in a single act of miraculous invention but in the way he embodied and transmitted the mechanical spirit of his time. By training others, organizing production, and proving that watches could be made in the mountains, he created an enduring legacy. The legend may be embellished, but the truth is equally powerful: Daniel JeanRichard was the man who turned the possibilities of the Jura into a tradition that would last for centuries.
Note: This article was inspired by my research into the early history of watchmaking in the Swiss Jura, which included re-reading many of the classic historical essays written in the late 19th and early 20th century. A series of articles by Dr. Marius Fallet in La Fédération Horlogère in the 1920s was the direct inspiration for this article. I recommend reading his original article on the topic, which is available in the collection of the Watch Library.
#DanielJeanRichard #EduardKaiser #etablisseur #folklore #LeLocle #MariusFallet
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Reconsidering the Folklore of Daniel JeanRichard
Portrait of Daniel JeanRichard (c. 1830) from Wikimedia CommonsThe history of Swiss watchmaking is filled with stories that blend fact with legend, and none is more emblematic than that of Daniel JeanRichard. Credited as the first watchmaker of the Neuchâtel Mountains, his story has been told for centuries as a tale of boyish genius, miraculous invention, and the birth of an industry. Yet when examined closely, much of what we know about him rests on a foundation of myth, embellished by chroniclers eager to celebrate a local hero. Still, beneath these exaggerations lies a deeper truth: JeanRichard was not only a craftsman of talent but also a figure who embodied the adaptability, resourcefulness, and entrepreneurial spirit of his region. To understand his legacy, we must first retell his story as it has been passed down, then place it in the context of his time, and finally consider his most lasting contribution—the system of établissage that defined Swiss watchmaking for generations.
The Legend of the English Watch
Daniel JeanRichard is credited today with establishing watchmaking among the resourceful but isolated farmers of the Swiss Jura mountains. According to tradition, the pivotal moment came in 1679 when a traveling horse dealer named Péter brought an English watch to La Sagne. Damaged on the journey, the watch was entrusted to young Daniel JeanRichard, who had never seen such an object before. Inspired, the boy supposedly set about building a similar piece from scratch, inventing the tools, forging the components, and finishing his own working watch within a year and a half. His neighbors, astonished by this feat, began placing orders, and JeanRichard soon became the first watchmaker of the mountains.
Daniel JeanRichard promises to repair a visitor’s English watch in this classic postcardThis tale was well-known in the 19th century, with the earliest telling attributed to Frédéric Samuel Ostervald’s 1766 “Description of the Mountains and Valleys that are part of the Principality of Neuchâtel and Valangin.” It has endured as the foundational legend of watchmaking in Neuchâtel and the Jura triangle, and is commonly repeated as fact to this day. But the inconsistencies are obvious. Depending on his (disputed) birth date, young Daniel could be as young as seven years of age and fourteen at most. Some versions say Péter first approached Daniel’s father, a gunsmith, who passed the incredibly rare and valuable object in the hands of his young son. Some suggest that Daniel or his father was a locksmith already adept at repairing clocks, while others suggest he was just a boy tinkering with metalwork. What unites them is the desire to portray him as a mechanical prodigy, the “spark” that ignited an entire industry.
Yet the historical record shows that watches were hardly unknown in the Jura at the time. Estate inventories from Le Locle in the 1660s list pocket watches alongside clocks, hourglasses, and sundials. By 1680, watches were common among the English bourgeoisie, and ties between Neuchâtel and England were already strong, with Swiss officers in the British army and Swiss pastors serving in London. It is plausible that a horse dealer brought a watch to La Sagne, but it was not the first watch ever seen in the region. And it is not at all incredible that a talented clockmaker and gunsmith like Daniel’s father, David JeanRichard, would have been able to repair a watch. The myth exaggerates the young boy’s involvement and isolation to emphasize his genius.
Daniel JeanRichard in Context
This colorized postcard shows the statue of Daniel JeanRichard, which still stands in the center of Le LocleEven if we subtract these legendary elements, Daniel JeanRichard’s career remains remarkable. Born around 1670 (various sources confidently claim 1665 or 1672), the son of David JeanRichard, who we know to be a master gunsmith and clockmaker, Daniel grew up in a household steeped in mechanics. His father repaired clocks, forged weapons, and even designed machinery for silk weaving. Such an environment provided the young Daniel with the technical grounding that made watchmaking a natural extension of existing skills.
Early records describe Daniel JeanRichard variously as a locksmith, goldsmith, and watch case maker before he was recognized as a watchmaker. By 1692 he was named a “master clockmaker,” and in 1703 an apprenticeship contract called him “honorable and expert Sir Daniel JeanRichard, master maker of pocket watches, Communier of La Sagne.” He lived for a time in La Neuveville, a town influenced by Geneva artisans, where he likely learned the techniques of small-scale watch and case production. Returning to Le Locle, he brought these skills back to the mountains, laying the groundwork for a local industry.
What stands out in JeanRichard’s life is his dual role as craftsman and teacher. Chroniclers name Jacob Brandt-dit-Gruerin (an auspicious and recognizable family name in watchmaking) among his apprentices, and many others soon followed. His influence extended through families such as Courvoisier, Perrelet, Jaquet-Droz, and Robert, all of whom became central to Swiss watchmaking. Whether or not he was the literal first watchmaker of the Jura, he was undeniably the one who trained and inspired the region’s future masters.
The Etablissage System
JeanRichard’s most lasting contribution was not the watches he produced but the structure of production he helped establish. The établissage system, which became the backbone of Swiss watchmaking, was a decentralized method in which different parts were made by specialized craftsmen (often working from their own homes) before being assembled by an établisseur.
This model fit perfectly with the social and economic environment of the Jura Mountains. Farming families faced long winters when agricultural work was scarce, and they turned to artisanal trades to supplement their income. Metalworking skills were widespread in the isolated region, and these jobs could be performed in cottages, often by entire families. The établisseur coordinated their work, collected components, and ensured the final watch came together. It was a system built on trust, cooperation, and the flexibility of part-time labor, which made it more adaptable than the centralized workshops of France or England.
A 1925 sketch by artist Eduard Kaiser showing a historic watchmakerJeanRichard, who himself began with multiple trades (gunsmithing, locksmithing, and goldsmithing) understood the power of dividing work into manageable specialties. His role in teaching apprentices and spreading the skills of case making, engraving, and assembly mirrored the way the établissage system would later function. In this sense, his personal experience foreshadowed the structure of the industry. He was not just a solitary genius but the nucleus around which an ecosystem of craftsmen organized themselves.
A Teacher Who Inspired An Industry
The tale of the horse dealer’s watch and the boy who invented horology from scratch is less a factual record than a symbolic tribute to the ingenuity of the people of the Swiss Jura mountains. Yet when placed in context, Daniel JeanRichard’s true achievements are no less impressive. He inherited a mechanical tradition from his family, absorbed new techniques from Geneva artisans, and established himself as both a craftsman and teacher in Le Locle. More importantly, he helped shape the établissage system that allowed watchmaking to spread through the Jura, transforming the economy of the mountains and laying the foundation of Swiss horology.
JeanRichard’s genius lies not in a single act of miraculous invention but in the way he embodied and transmitted the mechanical spirit of his time. By training others, organizing production, and proving that watches could be made in the mountains, he created an enduring legacy. The legend may be embellished, but the truth is equally powerful: Daniel JeanRichard was the man who turned the possibilities of the Jura into a tradition that would last for centuries.
Note: This article was inspired by my research into the early history of watchmaking in the Swiss Jura, which included re-reading many of the classic historical essays written in the late 19th and early 20th century. A series of articles by Dr. Marius Fallet in La Fédération Horlogère in the 1920s was the direct inspiration for this article. I recommend reading his original article on the topic, which is available in the collection of the Watch Library.
#DanielJeanRichard #EduardKaiser #etablisseur #folklore #LeLocle #MariusFallet
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Reconsidering the Folklore of Daniel JeanRichard
Portrait of Daniel JeanRichard (c. 1830) from Wikimedia CommonsThe history of Swiss watchmaking is filled with stories that blend fact with legend, and none is more emblematic than that of Daniel JeanRichard. Credited as the first watchmaker of the Neuchâtel Mountains, his story has been told for centuries as a tale of boyish genius, miraculous invention, and the birth of an industry. Yet when examined closely, much of what we know about him rests on a foundation of myth, embellished by chroniclers eager to celebrate a local hero. Still, beneath these exaggerations lies a deeper truth: JeanRichard was not only a craftsman of talent but also a figure who embodied the adaptability, resourcefulness, and entrepreneurial spirit of his region. To understand his legacy, we must first retell his story as it has been passed down, then place it in the context of his time, and finally consider his most lasting contribution—the system of établissage that defined Swiss watchmaking for generations.
The Legend of the English Watch
Daniel JeanRichard is credited today with establishing watchmaking among the resourceful but isolated farmers of the Swiss Jura mountains. According to tradition, the pivotal moment came in 1679 when a traveling horse dealer named Péter brought an English watch to La Sagne. Damaged on the journey, the watch was entrusted to young Daniel JeanRichard, who had never seen such an object before. Inspired, the boy supposedly set about building a similar piece from scratch, inventing the tools, forging the components, and finishing his own working watch within a year and a half. His neighbors, astonished by this feat, began placing orders, and JeanRichard soon became the first watchmaker of the mountains.
Daniel JeanRichard promises to repair a visitor’s English watch in this classic postcardThis tale was well-known in the 19th century, with the earliest telling attributed to Frédéric Samuel Ostervald’s 1766 “Description of the Mountains and Valleys that are part of the Principality of Neuchâtel and Valangin.” It has endured as the foundational legend of watchmaking in Neuchâtel and the Jura triangle, and is commonly repeated as fact to this day. But the inconsistencies are obvious. Depending on his (disputed) birth date, young Daniel could be as young as seven years of age and fourteen at most. Some versions say Péter first approached Daniel’s father, a gunsmith, who passed the incredibly rare and valuable object in the hands of his young son. Some suggest that Daniel or his father was a locksmith already adept at repairing clocks, while others suggest he was just a boy tinkering with metalwork. What unites them is the desire to portray him as a mechanical prodigy, the “spark” that ignited an entire industry.
Yet the historical record shows that watches were hardly unknown in the Jura at the time. Estate inventories from Le Locle in the 1660s list pocket watches alongside clocks, hourglasses, and sundials. By 1680, watches were common among the English bourgeoisie, and ties between Neuchâtel and England were already strong, with Swiss officers in the British army and Swiss pastors serving in London. It is plausible that a horse dealer brought a watch to La Sagne, but it was not the first watch ever seen in the region. And it is not at all incredible that a talented clockmaker and gunsmith like Daniel’s father, David JeanRichard, would have been able to repair a watch. The myth exaggerates the young boy’s involvement and isolation to emphasize his genius.
Daniel JeanRichard in Context
This colorized postcard shows the statue of Daniel JeanRichard, which still stands in the center of Le LocleEven if we subtract these legendary elements, Daniel JeanRichard’s career remains remarkable. Born around 1670 (various sources confidently claim 1665 or 1672), the son of David JeanRichard, who we know to be a master gunsmith and clockmaker, Daniel grew up in a household steeped in mechanics. His father repaired clocks, forged weapons, and even designed machinery for silk weaving. Such an environment provided the young Daniel with the technical grounding that made watchmaking a natural extension of existing skills.
Early records describe Daniel JeanRichard variously as a locksmith, goldsmith, and watch case maker before he was recognized as a watchmaker. By 1692 he was named a “master clockmaker,” and in 1703 an apprenticeship contract called him “honorable and expert Sir Daniel JeanRichard, master maker of pocket watches, Communier of La Sagne.” He lived for a time in La Neuveville, a town influenced by Geneva artisans, where he likely learned the techniques of small-scale watch and case production. Returning to Le Locle, he brought these skills back to the mountains, laying the groundwork for a local industry.
What stands out in JeanRichard’s life is his dual role as craftsman and teacher. Chroniclers name Jacob Brandt-dit-Gruerin (an auspicious and recognizable family name in watchmaking) among his apprentices, and many others soon followed. His influence extended through families such as Courvoisier, Perrelet, Jaquet-Droz, and Robert, all of whom became central to Swiss watchmaking. Whether or not he was the literal first watchmaker of the Jura, he was undeniably the one who trained and inspired the region’s future masters.
The Etablissage System
JeanRichard’s most lasting contribution was not the watches he produced but the structure of production he helped establish. The établissage system, which became the backbone of Swiss watchmaking, was a decentralized method in which different parts were made by specialized craftsmen (often working from their own homes) before being assembled by an établisseur.
This model fit perfectly with the social and economic environment of the Jura Mountains. Farming families faced long winters when agricultural work was scarce, and they turned to artisanal trades to supplement their income. Metalworking skills were widespread in the isolated region, and these jobs could be performed in cottages, often by entire families. The établisseur coordinated their work, collected components, and ensured the final watch came together. It was a system built on trust, cooperation, and the flexibility of part-time labor, which made it more adaptable than the centralized workshops of France or England.
A 1925 sketch by artist Eduard Kaiser showing a historic watchmakerJeanRichard, who himself began with multiple trades (gunsmithing, locksmithing, and goldsmithing) understood the power of dividing work into manageable specialties. His role in teaching apprentices and spreading the skills of case making, engraving, and assembly mirrored the way the établissage system would later function. In this sense, his personal experience foreshadowed the structure of the industry. He was not just a solitary genius but the nucleus around which an ecosystem of craftsmen organized themselves.
A Teacher Who Inspired An Industry
The tale of the horse dealer’s watch and the boy who invented horology from scratch is less a factual record than a symbolic tribute to the ingenuity of the people of the Swiss Jura mountains. Yet when placed in context, Daniel JeanRichard’s true achievements are no less impressive. He inherited a mechanical tradition from his family, absorbed new techniques from Geneva artisans, and established himself as both a craftsman and teacher in Le Locle. More importantly, he helped shape the établissage system that allowed watchmaking to spread through the Jura, transforming the economy of the mountains and laying the foundation of Swiss horology.
JeanRichard’s genius lies not in a single act of miraculous invention but in the way he embodied and transmitted the mechanical spirit of his time. By training others, organizing production, and proving that watches could be made in the mountains, he created an enduring legacy. The legend may be embellished, but the truth is equally powerful: Daniel JeanRichard was the man who turned the possibilities of the Jura into a tradition that would last for centuries.
Note: This article was inspired by my research into the early history of watchmaking in the Swiss Jura, which included re-reading many of the classic historical essays written in the late 19th and early 20th century. A series of articles by Dr. Marius Fallet in La Fédération Horlogère in the 1920s was the direct inspiration for this article. I recommend reading his original article on the topic, which is available in the collection of the Watch Library.
#DanielJeanRichard #EduardKaiser #etablisseur #folklore #LeLocle #MariusFallet
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Proto, by Laura Spinney
I interrupted the sequence of novels I’ve been reading recently to absorb a non-fiction book, Proto by Laura Spinney (left). I find linguistics a fascinating subject and when I saw a review of this recently and couldn’t resist. I’m glad I bought it because it’s absolutely fascinating. It is the story – or at least a very plausible account of the story of the lost ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the methods that have been used to reconstruct “Proto”, and why it was the spark that generated so many other languages across Europe, Eurasia and India.
The topic is very complex and I won’t attempt to describe it all in depth here; each chapter could be a book in itself because each family of languages within the Indo-European group – including lost ones such as Tocharian – has its own fascinating story. There are chapters focussing on the origins of language itself, the possibilities surround Proto (a language that was never written and probably exists in many dialects), Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic and Italic, the Indo-Iranian group (based on Sanskrit), Baltic and Slavic, and Albanian, Armenian and Greek. The last of these is fascinating because it used a method of writing borrowed from a non-Indo-European source that became the origin of the European alphabet.
The story of which all these are subplots begins around the Black Sea shortly after end of the last Ice Age. In this area there lived mesolithic hunter-gatherers who had survived the ice who interacted with farmers moving up from the direction of modern day Syria. Their languages would have merged in some way to allow them to describe things that their neighbours had that they didn’t. Hunter-gatherers would not have words for, e.g., ploughing or millet while farmers would have fewer words for spears and other equipment. Into this mix, the argument goes, came a third group, a fully nomadic culture called the Yamnaya people. These people subsequently underwent vast migrations across the continent and were responsible for spreading the Proto-Indo-European languages. That’s a hypothesis, not a proven fact, but it is plausible and has a reasonable amount of evidence in its favour.
Recent progress in this field has been driven not only by linguists but also by archaeologists and geneticists, with each aspect of this triangulation vital. It was reading about archaeology in this book that prompted me to write a post about the Nebra Sky Disc. There are some fascinating snippets from palaeogenetics, too. Full DNA sequences are now known for about 10,000 individuals who lived in prehistoric times.
One extraordinary find involves two burials of individuals who both lived about 5,000 years ago. Their DNA profiles match so well that they were probably second cousins or first cousins once removed. The thing is that one of them was buried in the Don Valley, north-east of Rostov in modern-day Russian, while the other was found 3,000 km away in the Altai mountains. Assuming they were both buried where they died, the implications for the distance over which people could move in a lifetime are remarkable.
Another fascinating genetic snippet applies to Irish, a Celtic language. The Celtic languages derive from a proto-Celtic source that probably arose about 1000 BC. Around 2450 BC one of the cultures preceding the Celts arrived in Britain and Ireland, now called the Beaker People because of their taste in pottery. The genetic record shows that the DNA of the Beaker folk replaced about 90% of the previous local gene pool, and all of the Y chromosomes; for some reason men of the earlier culture stopped fathering children. A similar change happened in Ireland, about 200 years later.One possible inference is that there was a violent conquest involving the erasure of the male population, but we don’t know for sure that it was sudden and catastrophic.
Whatever language the Beaker people brought with them was not Celtic (though it may have been Indo-European). The fascinating conundrum is that when Celtic languages arrived in Ireland whoever brought them left not a trace in the genetic record. This is unlike any of the similar changes in language use throughout European pre-history. Either the population responsible has not been identified or the language was spread through communication (e.g. for trade) rather than settlement. Irish may be a Celtic language, but there is little evidence of significant numbers of Celts settling here and bringing it with them.
Some time ago I wrote a post about the Celtic languages, which you might want to look at if you’re interested in this topic. A lot of that post I now realize to be very simplistic, but to add one other snippet I should mention that the name of Turkish football team Galatassaray translates to “Palace of the Celts” after the Celtic-speaking people who settled in Anatolia; these were the Galatians to whom Paul addressed his Epistle.
I thoroughly recommend this fascinating book. It made me want to find out more about so many things.
#archaeology #BeakerPeople #CelticLanguages #Genetics #LasuraSpinney #liguistics #Proto #ProtoIndoEuropeanLanguage #YamnayaCulture
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Proto, by Laura Spinney
I interrupted the sequence of novels I’ve been reading recently to absorb a non-fiction book, Proto by Laura Spinney (left). I find linguistics a fascinating subject and when I saw a review of this recently and couldn’t resist. I’m glad I bought it because it’s absolutely fascinating. It is the story – or at least a very plausible account of the story of the lost ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the methods that have been used to reconstruct “Proto”, and why it was the spark that generated so many other languages across Europe, Eurasia and India.
The topic is very complex and I won’t attempt to describe it all in depth here; each chapter could be a book in itself because each family of languages within the Indo-European group – including lost ones such as Tocharian – has its own fascinating story. There are chapters focussing on the origins of language itself, the possibilities surround Proto (a language that was never written and probably exists in many dialects), Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic and Italic, the Indo-Iranian group (based on Sanskrit), Baltic and Slavic, and Albanian, Armenian and Greek. The last of these is fascinating because it used a method of writing borrowed from a non-Indo-European source that became the origin of the European alphabet.
The story of which all these are subplots begins around the Black Sea shortly after end of the last Ice Age. In this area there lived mesolithic hunter-gatherers who had survived the ice who interacted with farmers moving up from the direction of modern day Syria. Their languages would have merged in some way to allow them to describe things that their neighbours had that they didn’t. Hunter-gatherers would not have words for, e.g., ploughing or barley while farmers would have fewer words for spears and other hunting equipment. Into this mix, the argument goes, came a third group, a fully nomadic culture called the Yamnaya people. These people and their successors subsequently underwent vast migrations from the steppes across the continent and were responsible for spreading the Proto-Indo-European languages. That’s a hypothesis, not a proven fact, but it is plausible and has a reasonable amount of evidence in its favour.
Recent progress in this field has been driven not only by linguists but also by archaeologists and geneticists, with each aspect of this triangulation vital. It was reading about archaeology in this book that prompted me to write a post about the Nebra Sky Disc. There are some fascinating snippets from palaeogenetics, too. Full DNA sequences are now known for about 10,000 individuals who lived in prehistoric times.
One extraordinary find involves two burials of individuals who both lived about 5,000 years ago. Their DNA profiles match so well that they were probably second cousins or first cousins once removed. The thing is that one of them was buried in the Don Valley, north-east of Rostov in modern-day Russian, while the other was found 3,000 km away in the Altai mountains. Assuming they were both buried where they died, the implications for the distance over which people could move in a lifetime are remarkable.
Another fascinating genetic snippet applies to Irish, a Celtic language. The Celtic languages derive from a proto-Celtic source that probably arose about 1000 BC. Around 2450 BC one of the cultures preceding the Celts arrived in Britain and Ireland, now called the Bell Beaker People because of their taste in pottery. The genetic record shows that the DNA of the Beaker folk replaced about 90% of the previous local gene pool, and all of the Y chromosomes; for some reason men of the earlier culture stopped fathering children. A similar change happened in Ireland, about 200 years later.One possible inference is that there was a violent conquest involving the erasure of the male population, but we don’t know for sure that it was sudden and catastrophic.
Whatever language the Beaker people brought with them was not Celtic (though it may have been Indo-European). The fascinating conundrum is that when Celtic languages arrived in Ireland whoever brought them left not a trace in the genetic record. This is unlike any of the similar changes in language use throughout European pre-history. Either the population responsible has not been identified or the language was spread through communication (e.g. for trade) rather than settlement. Irish may be a Celtic language, but there is little evidence of significant numbers of Celts settling here and bringing it with them.
Some time ago I wrote a post about the Celtic languages, which you might want to look at if you’re interested in this topic. A lot of that post I now realize to be very simplistic, but to add one other snippet I should mention that the name of Turkish football team Galatasaray translates to “Palace of the Celts” after the Celtic-speaking people who settled in Anatolia; these were the Galatians to whom Paul addressed his Epistle.
I thoroughly recommend this fascinating book. It made me want to find out more about so many things. It also gacve me additional motivation to pursue an idea I had a while ago to do a Masters in Linguistics wehn I retire from physics…
#archaeology #BeakerPeople #CelticLanguages #Genetics #LasuraSpinney #liguistics #Proto #ProtoIndoEuropeanLanguage #YamnayaCulture
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Proto, by Laura Spinney
I interrupted the sequence of novels I’ve been reading recently to absorb a non-fiction book, Proto by Laura Spinney (left). I find linguistics a fascinating subject and when I saw a review of this recently and couldn’t resist. I’m glad I bought it because it’s absolutely fascinating. It is the story – or at least a very plausible account of the story of the lost ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the methods that have been used to reconstruct “Proto”, and why it was the spark that generated so many other languages across Europe, Eurasia and India.
The topic is very complex and I won’t attempt to describe it all in depth here; each chapter could be a book in itself because each family of languages within the Indo-European group – including lost ones such as Tocharian – has its own fascinating story. There are chapters focussing on the origins of language itself, the possibilities surround Proto (a language that was never written and probably exists in many dialects), Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic and Italic, the Indo-Iranian group (based on Sanskrit), Baltic and Slavic, and Albanian, Armenian and Greek. The last of these is fascinating because it used a method of writing borrowed from a non-Indo-European source that became the origin of the European alphabet.
The story of which all these are subplots begins around the Black Sea shortly after end of the last Ice Age. In this area there lived mesolithic hunter-gatherers who had survived the ice who interacted with farmers moving up from the direction of modern day Syria. Their languages would have merged in some way to allow them to describe things that their neighbours had that they didn’t. Hunter-gatherers would not have words for, e.g., ploughing or millet while farmers would have fewer words for spears and other equipment. Into this mix, the argument goes, came a third group, a fully nomadic culture called the Yamnaya people. These people subsequently underwent vast migrations across the continent and were responsible for spreading the Proto-Indo-European languages. That’s a hypothesis, not a proven fact, but it is plausible and has a reasonable amount of evidence in its favour.
Recent progress in this field has been driven not only by linguists but also by archaeologists and geneticists, with each aspect of this triangulation vital. It was reading about archaeology in this book that prompted me to write a post about the Nebra Sky Disc. There are some fascinating snippets from palaeogenetics, too. Full DNA sequences are now known for about 10,000 individuals who lived in prehistoric times.
One extraordinary find involves two burials of individuals who both lived about 5,000 years ago. Their DNA profiles match so well that they were probably second cousins or first cousins once removed. The thing is that one of them was buried in the Don Valley, north-east of Rostov in modern-day Russian, while the other was found 3,000 km away in the Altai mountains. Assuming they were both buried where they died, the implications for the distance over which people could move in a lifetime are remarkable.
Another fascinating genetic snippet applies to Irish, a Celtic language. The Celtic languages derive from a proto-Celtic source that probably arose about 1000 BC. Around 2450 BC one of the cultures preceding the Celts arrived in Britain and Ireland, now called the Beaker People because of their taste in pottery. The genetic record shows that the DNA of the Beaker folk replaced about 90% of the previous local gene pool, and all of the Y chromosomes; for some reason men of the earlier culture stopped fathering children. A similar change happened in Ireland, about 200 years later.One possible inference is that there was a violent conquest involving the erasure of the male population, but we don’t know for sure that it was sudden and catastrophic.
Whatever language the Beaker people brought with them was not Celtic (though it may have been Indo-European). The fascinating conundrum is that when Celtic languages arrived in Ireland whoever brought them left not a trace in the genetic record. This is unlike any of the similar changes in language use throughout European pre-history. Either the population responsible has not been identified or the language was spread through communication (e.g. for trade) rather than settlement. Irish may be a Celtic language, but there is little evidence of significant numbers of Celts settling here and bringing it with them.
Some time ago I wrote a post about the Celtic languages, which you might want to look at if you’re interested in this topic. A lot of that post I now realize to be very simplistic, but to add one other snippet I should mention that the name of Turkish football team Galatassaray translates to “Palace of the Celts” after the Celtic-speaking people who settled in Anatolia; these were the Galatians to whom Paul addressed his Epistle.
I thoroughly recommend this fascinating book. It made me want to find out more about so many things.
#archaeology #BeakerPeople #CelticLanguages #Genetics #LasuraSpinney #liguistics #Proto #ProtoIndoEuropeanLanguage #YamnayaCulture
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Proto, by Laura Spinney
I interrupted the sequence of novels I’ve been reading recently to absorb a non-fiction book, Proto by Laura Spinney (left). I find linguistics a fascinating subject and when I saw a review of this recently and couldn’t resist. I’m glad I bought it because it’s absolutely fascinating. It is the story – or at least a very plausible account of the story of the lost ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the methods that have been used to reconstruct “Proto”, and why it was the spark that generated so many other languages across Europe, Eurasia and India.
The topic is very complex and I won’t attempt to describe it all in depth here; each chapter could be a book in itself because each family of languages within the Indo-European group – including lost ones such as Tocharian – has its own fascinating story. There are chapters focussing on the origins of language itself, the possibilities surround Proto (a language that was never written and probably exists in many dialects), Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic and Italic, the Indo-Iranian group (based on Sanskrit), Baltic and Slavic, and Albanian, Armenian and Greek. The last of these is fascinating because it used a method of writing borrowed from a non-Indo-European source that became the origin of the European alphabet.
The story of which all these are subplots begins around the Black Sea shortly after end of the last Ice Age. In this area there lived mesolithic hunter-gatherers who had survived the ice who interacted with farmers moving up from the direction of modern day Syria. Their languages would have merged in some way to allow them to describe things that their neighbours had that they didn’t. Hunter-gatherers would not have words for, e.g., ploughing or barley while farmers would have fewer words for spears and other hunting equipment. Into this mix, the argument goes, came a third group, a fully nomadic culture called the Yamnaya people. These people and their successors subsequently underwent vast migrations from the steppes across the continent and were responsible for spreading the Proto-Indo-European languages. That’s a hypothesis, not a proven fact, but it is plausible and has a reasonable amount of evidence in its favour.
Recent progress in this field has been driven not only by linguists but also by archaeologists and geneticists, with each aspect of this triangulation vital. It was reading about archaeology in this book that prompted me to write a post about the Nebra Sky Disc. There are some fascinating snippets from palaeogenetics, too. Full DNA sequences are now known for about 10,000 individuals who lived in prehistoric times.
One extraordinary find involves two burials of individuals who both lived about 5,000 years ago. Their DNA profiles match so well that they were probably second cousins or first cousins once removed. The thing is that one of them was buried in the Don Valley, north-east of Rostov in modern-day Russian, while the other was found 3,000 km away in the Altai mountains. Assuming they were both buried where they died, the implications for the distance over which people could move in a lifetime are remarkable.
Another fascinating genetic snippet applies to Irish, a Celtic language. The Celtic languages derive from a proto-Celtic source that probably arose about 1000 BC. Around 2450 BC one of the cultures preceding the Celts arrived in Britain and Ireland, now called the Bell Beaker People because of their taste in pottery. The genetic record shows that the DNA of the Beaker folk replaced about 90% of the previous local gene pool, and all of the Y chromosomes; for some reason men of the earlier culture stopped fathering children. A similar change happened in Ireland, about 200 years later.One possible inference is that there was a violent conquest involving the erasure of the male population, but we don’t know for sure that it was sudden and catastrophic.
Whatever language the Beaker people brought with them was not Celtic (though it may have been Indo-European). The fascinating conundrum is that when Celtic languages arrived in Ireland whoever brought them left not a trace in the genetic record. This is unlike any of the similar changes in language use throughout European pre-history. Either the population responsible has not been identified or the language was spread through communication (e.g. for trade) rather than settlement. Irish may be a Celtic language, but there is little evidence of significant numbers of Celts settling here and bringing it with them.
Some time ago I wrote a post about the Celtic languages, which you might want to look at if you’re interested in this topic. A lot of that post I now realize to be very simplistic, but to add one other snippet I should mention that the name of Turkish football team Galatasaray translates to “Palace of the Celts” after the Celtic-speaking people who settled in Anatolia; these were the Galatians to whom Paul addressed his Epistle.
I thoroughly recommend this fascinating book. It made me want to find out more about so many things. It also gacve me additional motivation to pursue an idea I had a while ago to do a Masters in Linguistics wehn I retire from physics…
#archaeology #BeakerPeople #CelticLanguages #Genetics #LasuraSpinney #liguistics #Proto #ProtoIndoEuropeanLanguage #YamnayaCulture
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Proto, by Laura Spinney
I interrupted the sequence of novels I’ve been reading recently to absorb a non-fiction book, Proto by Laura Spinney (left). I find linguistics a fascinating subject and when I saw a review of this recently and couldn’t resist. I’m glad I bought it because it’s absolutely fascinating. It is the story – or at least a very plausible account of the story of the lost ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the methods that have been used to reconstruct “Proto”, and why it was the spark that generated so many other languages across Europe, Eurasia and India.
The topic is very complex and I won’t attempt to describe it all in depth here; each chapter could be a book in itself because each family of languages within the Indo-European group – including lost ones such as Tocharian – has its own fascinating story. There are chapters focussing on the origins of language itself, the possibilities surround Proto (a language that was never written and probably exists in many dialects), Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic and Italic, the Indo-Iranian group (based on Sanskrit), Baltic and Slavic, and Albanian, Armenian and Greek. The last of these is fascinating because it used a method of writing borrowed from a non-Indo-European source that became the origin of the European alphabet.
The story of which all these are subplots begins around the Black Sea shortly after end of the last Ice Age. In this area there lived mesolithic hunter-gatherers who had survived the ice who interacted with farmers moving up from the direction of modern day Syria. Their languages would have merged in some way to allow them to describe things that their neighbours had that they didn’t. Hunter-gatherers would not have words for, e.g., ploughing or millet while farmers would have fewer words for spears and other equipment. Into this mix, the argument goes, came a third group, a fully nomadic culture called the Yamnaya people. These people subsequently underwent vast migrations across the continent and were responsible for spreading the Proto-Indo-European languages. That’s a hypothesis, not a proven fact, but it is plausible and has a reasonable amount of evidence in its favour.
Recent progress in this field has been driven not only by linguists but also by archaeologists and geneticists, with each aspect of this triangulation vital. It was reading about archaeology in this book that prompted me to write a post about the Nebra Sky Disc. There are some fascinating snippets from palaeogenetics, too. Full DNA sequences are now known for about 10,000 individuals who lived in prehistoric times.
One extraordinary find involves two burials of individuals who both lived about 5,000 years ago. Their DNA profiles match so well that they were probably second cousins or first cousins once removed. The thing is that one of them was buried in the Don Valley, north-east of Rostov in modern-day Russian, while the other was found 3,000 km away in the Altai mountains. Assuming they were both buried where they died, the implications for the distance over which people could move in a lifetime are remarkable.
Another fascinating genetic snippet applies to Irish, a Celtic language. The Celtic languages derive from a proto-Celtic source that probably arose about 1000 BC. Around 2450 BC one of the cultures preceding the Celts arrived in Britain and Ireland, now called the Beaker People because of their taste in pottery. The genetic record shows that the DNA of the Beaker folk replaced about 90% of the previous local gene pool, and all of the Y chromosomes; for some reason men of the earlier culture stopped fathering children. A similar change happened in Ireland, about 200 years later.One possible inference is that there was a violent conquest involving the erasure of the male population, but we don’t know for sure that it was sudden and catastrophic.
Whatever language the Beaker people brought with them was not Celtic (though it may have been Indo-European). The fascinating conundrum is that when Celtic languages arrived in Ireland whoever brought them left not a trace in the genetic record. This is unlike any of the similar changes in language use throughout European pre-history. Either the population responsible has not been identified or the language was spread through communication (e.g. for trade) rather than settlement. Irish may be a Celtic language, but there is little evidence of significant numbers of Celts settling here and bringing it with them.
Some time ago I wrote a post about the Celtic languages, which you might want to look at if you’re interested in this topic. A lot of that post I now realize to be very simplistic, but to add one other snippet I should mention that the name of Turkish football team Galatassaray translates to “Palace of the Celts” after the Celtic-speaking people who settled in Anatolia; these were the Galatians to whom Paul addressed his Epistle.
I thoroughly recommend this fascinating book. It made me want to find out more about so many things.
#archaeology #BeakerPeople #CelticLanguages #Genetics #LasuraSpinney #liguistics #Proto #ProtoIndoEuropeanLanguage #YamnayaCulture
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Arion – The Light that Burns the Sky Review
By El Cuervo
One of the multitude of European power metal bands flying relatively low to the ground, Finland’s Arion (pronounced like Orion or carrion?) have seen coverage just once previously at AngryMetalGuy.com. The late, great Huck n’ Roll1 opined that their third record was competent but generic, seeking hits rather than their own sound. 2025 has arrived, and with it comes a successor release entitled The Light that Burns the Sky. Pitched as a “highly anticipated symphonic masterpiece,” and with a growing well of experience underpinning the band, I set appropriate expectations as I hit play.
Arion’s strongest quality is a legitimate chunkiness they boast in the face of Europower competitors that I usually find saccharine. Their compositions are appropriately maximalist, with reasonably dense layers of metal instrumentation fused with strings and faux choirs. But the songwriting and production generally elevate the impact of the guitars and drums in the mix above the symphonic elements; in particular, the guitars and drums benefit from a robust, battering tone while subjugating the keyboard elements. Likewise, the vocalist is sufficiently acrobatic to hit the necessary notes but prioritizes a gritty, shouting personality above a wailing vibrato. Finally, The Light that Burns moves at a quick pace, which, when paired with the compositions, coalesces into a sound that’s pretty heavy for power metal. The title track is an early highlight and exemplifies the qualities described above. Its speed and heft sounds something like Symphony X, with an appreciable brevity resulting in a song that passes instantaneously.
However, I find that The Light that Burns struggles to keep itself fresh. Despite its beefier-than-most style, the album becomes more repetitive and generic by side B. It contains ten proper songs (not including the short opener), and they all sound fairly similar. I find that my initial enthusiasm only persists for the first few songs; beyond this, the spark is extinguished. For example, “Blasphemous Paradise” is a pale imitation of the title track as it features stylistically similar but less enjoyable melodies. I query the purpose of songs that are simply lesser renditions of others. And the further into the album ventured, the more I struggled to maintain my focus; I was hard pressed to write any notes at all about the penultimate track called “In the Heart of the Sea.” I’ll happily listen to some bands doing the same thing ten times over, but only where they produce great music. By contrast, Arion merely produce serviceable music.
Where Arion attempt to generate the quality through variety I find myself craving, they still don’t quite achieve this. “Wings of Twilight” uses a female vocalist in its chorus who offers an ear-catching change of tone, but she’s ultimately less effective because her style is more generic than the main vocalist. This song also leans more heavily into synths. These two factors contribute to the song diluting the band’s personality and heaviness. Likewise, the closer runs for longer in an effort to reach something more epic. But what this practically entails is nearly two minutes of a repetitive introduction, extending what should be a sub-five-minute song to one that approaches seven minutes. By contrast, and despite my general enjoyment of the heavier songs here, a mid-album ballad might have worked better to refresh the sound of The Light that Burns for its second half.
There are substantial strengths in the core sound of The Light that Burns, and there are a couple of strong songs, but Arion are just not compelling enough to warrant anything more than a neutral award. While I admire the trend towards heavier material, the songs are insufficiently distinct to carry a 45-minute album. And though this release may not be quite as generic as the last, my overall summary can still go no further than “competent”.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Websites: arion.com | facebook.com/arion
Releases Worldwide: February 28th, 2025#25 #2025 #Arion #Feb25 #FinnishMetal #Review #Reviews #SymphonicPowerMetal #SymphonyX #TheLightThatBurnsTheSky
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Arion – The Light that Burns the Sky Review
By El Cuervo
One of the multitude of European power metal bands flying relatively low to the ground, Finland’s Arion (pronounced like Orion or carrion?) have seen coverage just once previously at AngryMetalGuy.com. The late, great Huck n’ Roll1 opined that their third record was competent but generic, seeking hits rather than their own sound. 2025 has arrived, and with it comes a successor release entitled The Light that Burns the Sky. Pitched as a “highly anticipated symphonic masterpiece,” and with a growing well of experience underpinning the band, I set appropriate expectations as I hit play.
Arion’s strongest quality is a legitimate chunkiness they boast in the face of Europower competitors that I usually find saccharine. Their compositions are appropriately maximalist, with reasonably dense layers of metal instrumentation fused with strings and faux choirs. But the songwriting and production generally elevate the impact of the guitars and drums in the mix above the symphonic elements; in particular, the guitars and drums benefit from a robust, battering tone while subjugating the keyboard elements. Likewise, the vocalist is sufficiently acrobatic to hit the necessary notes but prioritizes a gritty, shouting personality above a wailing vibrato. Finally, The Light that Burns moves at a quick pace, which, when paired with the compositions, coalesces into a sound that’s pretty heavy for power metal. The title track is an early highlight and exemplifies the qualities described above. Its speed and heft sounds something like Symphony X, with an appreciable brevity resulting in a song that passes instantaneously.
However, I find that The Light that Burns struggles to keep itself fresh. Despite its beefier-than-most style, the album becomes more repetitive and generic by side B. It contains ten proper songs (not including the short opener), and they all sound fairly similar. I find that my initial enthusiasm only persists for the first few songs; beyond this, the spark is extinguished. For example, “Blasphemous Paradise” is a pale imitation of the title track as it features stylistically similar but less enjoyable melodies. I query the purpose of songs that are simply lesser renditions of others. And the further into the album ventured, the more I struggled to maintain my focus; I was hard pressed to write any notes at all about the penultimate track called “In the Heart of the Sea.” I’ll happily listen to some bands doing the same thing ten times over, but only where they produce great music. By contrast, Arion merely produce serviceable music.
Where Arion attempt to generate the quality through variety I find myself craving, they still don’t quite achieve this. “Wings of Twilight” uses a female vocalist in its chorus who offers an ear-catching change of tone, but she’s ultimately less effective because her style is more generic than the main vocalist. This song also leans more heavily into synths. These two factors contribute to the song diluting the band’s personality and heaviness. Likewise, the closer runs for longer in an effort to reach something more epic. But what this practically entails is nearly two minutes of a repetitive introduction, extending what should be a sub-five-minute song to one that approaches seven minutes. By contrast, and despite my general enjoyment of the heavier songs here, a mid-album ballad might have worked better to refresh the sound of The Light that Burns for its second half.
There are substantial strengths in the core sound of The Light that Burns, and there are a couple of strong songs, but Arion are just not compelling enough to warrant anything more than a neutral award. While I admire the trend towards heavier material, the songs are insufficiently distinct to carry a 45-minute album. And though this release may not be quite as generic as the last, my overall summary can still go no further than “competent”.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Websites: arion.com | facebook.com/arion
Releases Worldwide: February 28th, 2025#25 #2025 #Arion #Feb25 #FinnishMetal #Review #Reviews #SymphonicPowerMetal #SymphonyX #TheLightThatBurnsTheSky
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Arion – The Light that Burns the Sky Review
By El Cuervo
One of the multitude of European power metal bands flying relatively low to the ground, Finland’s Arion (pronounced like Orion or carrion?) have seen coverage just once previously at AngryMetalGuy.com. The late, great Huck n’ Roll1 opined that their third record was competent but generic, seeking hits rather than their own sound. 2025 has arrived, and with it comes a successor release entitled The Light that Burns the Sky. Pitched as a “highly anticipated symphonic masterpiece,” and with a growing well of experience underpinning the band, I set appropriate expectations as I hit play.
Arion’s strongest quality is a legitimate chunkiness they boast in the face of Europower competitors that I usually find saccharine. Their compositions are appropriately maximalist, with reasonably dense layers of metal instrumentation fused with strings and faux choirs. But the songwriting and production generally elevate the impact of the guitars and drums in the mix above the symphonic elements; in particular, the guitars and drums benefit from a robust, battering tone while subjugating the keyboard elements. Likewise, the vocalist is sufficiently acrobatic to hit the necessary notes but prioritizes a gritty, shouting personality above a wailing vibrato. Finally, The Light that Burns moves at a quick pace, which, when paired with the compositions, coalesces into a sound that’s pretty heavy for power metal. The title track is an early highlight and exemplifies the qualities described above. Its speed and heft sounds something like Symphony X, with an appreciable brevity resulting in a song that passes instantaneously.
However, I find that The Light that Burns struggles to keep itself fresh. Despite its beefier-than-most style, the album becomes more repetitive and generic by side B. It contains ten proper songs (not including the short opener), and they all sound fairly similar. I find that my initial enthusiasm only persists for the first few songs; beyond this, the spark is extinguished. For example, “Blasphemous Paradise” is a pale imitation of the title track as it features stylistically similar but less enjoyable melodies. I query the purpose of songs that are simply lesser renditions of others. And the further into the album ventured, the more I struggled to maintain my focus; I was hard pressed to write any notes at all about the penultimate track called “In the Heart of the Sea.” I’ll happily listen to some bands doing the same thing ten times over, but only where they produce great music. By contrast, Arion merely produce serviceable music.
Where Arion attempt to generate the quality through variety I find myself craving, they still don’t quite achieve this. “Wings of Twilight” uses a female vocalist in its chorus who offers an ear-catching change of tone, but she’s ultimately less effective because her style is more generic than the main vocalist. This song also leans more heavily into synths. These two factors contribute to the song diluting the band’s personality and heaviness. Likewise, the closer runs for longer in an effort to reach something more epic. But what this practically entails is nearly two minutes of a repetitive introduction, extending what should be a sub-five-minute song to one that approaches seven minutes. By contrast, and despite my general enjoyment of the heavier songs here, a mid-album ballad might have worked better to refresh the sound of The Light that Burns for its second half.
There are substantial strengths in the core sound of The Light that Burns, and there are a couple of strong songs, but Arion are just not compelling enough to warrant anything more than a neutral award. While I admire the trend towards heavier material, the songs are insufficiently distinct to carry a 45-minute album. And though this release may not be quite as generic as the last, my overall summary can still go no further than “competent”.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Websites: arion.com | facebook.com/arion
Releases Worldwide: February 28th, 2025#25 #2025 #Arion #Feb25 #FinnishMetal #Review #Reviews #SymphonicPowerMetal #SymphonyX #TheLightThatBurnsTheSky
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Arion – The Light that Burns the Sky Review
By El Cuervo
One of the multitude of European power metal bands flying relatively low to the ground, Finland’s Arion (pronounced like Orion or carrion?) have seen coverage just once previously at AngryMetalGuy.com. The late, great Huck n’ Roll1 opined that their third record was competent but generic, seeking hits rather than their own sound. 2025 has arrived, and with it comes a successor release entitled The Light that Burns the Sky. Pitched as a “highly anticipated symphonic masterpiece,” and with a growing well of experience underpinning the band, I set appropriate expectations as I hit play.
Arion’s strongest quality is a legitimate chunkiness they boast in the face of Europower competitors that I usually find saccharine. Their compositions are appropriately maximalist, with reasonably dense layers of metal instrumentation fused with strings and faux choirs. But the songwriting and production generally elevate the impact of the guitars and drums in the mix above the symphonic elements; in particular, the guitars and drums benefit from a robust, battering tone while subjugating the keyboard elements. Likewise, the vocalist is sufficiently acrobatic to hit the necessary notes but prioritizes a gritty, shouting personality above a wailing vibrato. Finally, The Light that Burns moves at a quick pace, which, when paired with the compositions, coalesces into a sound that’s pretty heavy for power metal. The title track is an early highlight and exemplifies the qualities described above. Its speed and heft sounds something like Symphony X, with an appreciable brevity resulting in a song that passes instantaneously.
However, I find that The Light that Burns struggles to keep itself fresh. Despite its beefier-than-most style, the album becomes more repetitive and generic by side B. It contains ten proper songs (not including the short opener), and they all sound fairly similar. I find that my initial enthusiasm only persists for the first few songs; beyond this, the spark is extinguished. For example, “Blasphemous Paradise” is a pale imitation of the title track as it features stylistically similar but less enjoyable melodies. I query the purpose of songs that are simply lesser renditions of others. And the further into the album ventured, the more I struggled to maintain my focus; I was hard pressed to write any notes at all about the penultimate track called “In the Heart of the Sea.” I’ll happily listen to some bands doing the same thing ten times over, but only where they produce great music. By contrast, Arion merely produce serviceable music.
Where Arion attempt to generate the quality through variety I find myself craving, they still don’t quite achieve this. “Wings of Twilight” uses a female vocalist in its chorus who offers an ear-catching change of tone, but she’s ultimately less effective because her style is more generic than the main vocalist. This song also leans more heavily into synths. These two factors contribute to the song diluting the band’s personality and heaviness. Likewise, the closer runs for longer in an effort to reach something more epic. But what this practically entails is nearly two minutes of a repetitive introduction, extending what should be a sub-five-minute song to one that approaches seven minutes. By contrast, and despite my general enjoyment of the heavier songs here, a mid-album ballad might have worked better to refresh the sound of The Light that Burns for its second half.
There are substantial strengths in the core sound of The Light that Burns, and there are a couple of strong songs, but Arion are just not compelling enough to warrant anything more than a neutral award. While I admire the trend towards heavier material, the songs are insufficiently distinct to carry a 45-minute album. And though this release may not be quite as generic as the last, my overall summary can still go no further than “competent”.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Websites: arion.com | facebook.com/arion
Releases Worldwide: February 28th, 2025#25 #2025 #Arion #Feb25 #FinnishMetal #Review #Reviews #SymphonicPowerMetal #SymphonyX #TheLightThatBurnsTheSky
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Eric Bates: Passing the Spark
Why do some people seem so natural on camera, while the rest of us feel awkward and inarticulate? This talk delves into the art of speaking to a camera and sharing your skills online...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgs7bcpcJI
From the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5_D5QQxvWKUPpMY3eNV-PrIzh1uHlR8x
All part of the #G4G series of videos:
https://www.youtube.com/@G4GCelebration/playlists
Boosts welcome (if content to do so)
#RecreationalMaths #RecMaths
#RecreationalMath #RecMath
#MTBoS #MathEd #MathEdChat -
To the masses of our heroic people, The 23rd anniversary of the martyrdom of the national, pan-Arab, and international leader, Comrade Abu Ali Mustafa, comes amidst the ongoing, intense, and brutal campaign of genocide waged by the international colonial system through its arm, the zionist entity. From its inception, this entity was established as a project and system aimed at eradicating the Palestinian people and imposing armed colonial repression on the entire region. Today, we remember the glorious history of the bloodshed, struggle, and lessons embodied by our great martyr leaders who paved the way for our people’s struggle from the pillars of tents and exile. They ignited the spark of resistance and the flame of the contemporary Palestinian revolution, armed struggle, and the Palestinian national liberation project. They fought, struggled, and sacrificed their lives in defense of our people’s existence, their just cause, and their legitimate rights. Today, we recall the spirit, thought, and approach of a leader who remained a beacon of love, passion, and a living example: Firstly: Abu Ali Mustafa is a national model who embodied the connection between leadership and heroism, words and actions. A true leader possesses culture, awareness, behavior, courage, and an unwavering commitment to resistance. His life of giving is a history of struggle that encapsulates the spirit of the people and the history of the Palestinian national movement. This was reflected in his famous saying on the land of Palestine: “We have returned to the homeland to resist, and we will not compromise on our principles.” He said this to root us deeper in our homeland to resist the project of genocide, displacement, and liquidation of the cause, to preserve our existence and the legitimacy of remaining, and to strengthen the steadfastness of our people in Gaza and the West Bank against massacres, sieges, starvation, and destruction. The school of resistance is a towering and comprehensive force, confirming that we face an enemy that understands only the language of resistance and targets the entire Palestinian community. Therefore, it is our duty to form a national resistance front to sustain the historical field confrontation and comprehensive resistance against the occupation, within Palestine and alongside supportive fronts against the brutal aggression. Secondly: Abu Ali Mustafa is a model of the Palestinian school in both word and deed, where the homeland stands above all factional or personal considerations. For him, national unity was neither a luxury nor empty talk, but has become a national necessity in the era of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, representing a liberating awareness that shook the pillars of the zionist entity, exposing its weakness and our people’s ability to defeat it. This drove it to resort to a frenzied colonial campaign to suppress the resistant consciousness. We renew our call to repel the aggression with popular and national unity and the unity of our heroic resistance, based on a broad national front, a unified national vision, and strategy that unleashes our people’s latent energies and engages them in the existential battle, leading our people in this struggle and providing the requirements for their steadfastness, in support of the critical epic that our people and resistance forces are fighting in all their locations and on various Arab and international fronts.Thirdly: Abu Ali Mustafa, the visionary leader, teaches us how to hold onto goals and rights, placing the right before the solution, the goal before the means, and the permanent over the temporary. National priorities should be set based on shared objectives and essential needs dictated by the historical moment. We may find ourselves facing the main task of re-evaluating and conducting a comprehensive national political review, resulting in a new national Palestinian vision.
Today, the national priority lies in implementing the “Beijing Declaration” by calling for the temporary leadership framework and immediately beginning the work of rebuilding national institutions, foremost among them the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Procrastination, wasting time, and waiting will not serve the national interest but will instead contribute to the liquidation projects and benefit those who bet on the Americans, zionists, and their accomplices among the reactionaries and Arab normalizers. Fourth: Abu Ali Mustafa was filled with confidence in the inevitability of victory, building a culture of hope in the face of a culture of despair and pessimism, maintaining optimism in times of pessimism, and nurturing a positive spirit against negativity. We face systematic attacks on our existence in Gaza, the West Bank, and everywhere, with attempts to dry up our camps through policies of displacement, killing, and destruction—an organized aggression on the existence of the Palestinian people, in Palestine and its surroundings, aimed at scattering the Palestinian people and leading them to deadly and destructive individual choices from Gaza to Al-Quds and the West Bank. Our collective and national duty is to protect Palestinian existence and preserve the Palestinian national identity from being diluted, thwarting the military, political, and strategic goals of the aggressors. Fifth: Abu Ali Mustafa, a founding leader, viewed the struggle between us and the zionist enemy as a historical, comprehensive, and open struggle, tied to the nature and essence of the enemy and its goals of denying the physical and spiritual existence of the Palestinian people in their homeland, and establishing the so-called “Jewish state”, fully supported by global imperialist powers, primarily the United States. Given its role as the advanced base in the Arab world, Comrade Abu Ali’s vision of the struggle was not limited to viewing it as merely between the Palestinian people and the “israeli” occupation. He fundamentally saw it as a struggle between the entire Arab nation, along with its vital forces, and the zionist enemy, which seeks to dominate and control the entire region, its resources, and its wealth, subjecting it entirely to its imperialist and colonial ambitions. The scope of this struggle touches all the peoples of our nation, as it is a defense of their existence, which is threatened by the collaboration of normalization regimes with the zionist project and their readiness to accept its dominance over the entire region. These regimes are betting on the defeat of the Palestinian people and their resistance, which remains the first line of defense for the Arab nation, its peoples, states, and the security of the Arab individual and the Arab nation in all its dimensions and meanings. The free people of the world, especially in the Western colonial center, must reject and condemn the brutal war of genocide and the Western partnership in it, intensifying the struggle against the war criminals and those who support the genocide, while supporting the just cause of our people, their struggle, and their legitimate resistance with all available tools. Pledge, loyalty, and glory to you, our martyr General Secretary Abu Ali Mustafa, son of the school of Al-Hakim, Al-Wadie, Guevara of Gaza, and Ghassan Kanafani. Glory to the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and to the makers of the great October 17th. Immortality to the martyrs, Freedom to our leader Ahmad Sa’adat and all our brave prisoners, Victory to the resistance. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Central Media OfficeAugust 27, 2024
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To the masses of our heroic people, The 23rd anniversary of the martyrdom of the national, pan-Arab, and international leader, Comrade Abu Ali Mustafa, comes amidst the ongoing, intense, and brutal campaign of genocide waged by the international colonial system through its arm, the zionist entity. From its inception, this entity was established as a project and system aimed at eradicating the Palestinian people and imposing armed colonial repression on the entire region. Today, we remember the glorious history of the bloodshed, struggle, and lessons embodied by our great martyr leaders who paved the way for our people’s struggle from the pillars of tents and exile. They ignited the spark of resistance and the flame of the contemporary Palestinian revolution, armed struggle, and the Palestinian national liberation project. They fought, struggled, and sacrificed their lives in defense of our people’s existence, their just cause, and their legitimate rights. Today, we recall the spirit, thought, and approach of a leader who remained a beacon of love, passion, and a living example: Firstly: Abu Ali Mustafa is a national model who embodied the connection between leadership and heroism, words and actions. A true leader possesses culture, awareness, behavior, courage, and an unwavering commitment to resistance. His life of giving is a history of struggle that encapsulates the spirit of the people and the history of the Palestinian national movement. This was reflected in his famous saying on the land of Palestine: “We have returned to the homeland to resist, and we will not compromise on our principles.” He said this to root us deeper in our homeland to resist the project of genocide, displacement, and liquidation of the cause, to preserve our existence and the legitimacy of remaining, and to strengthen the steadfastness of our people in Gaza and the West Bank against massacres, sieges, starvation, and destruction. The school of resistance is a towering and comprehensive force, confirming that we face an enemy that understands only the language of resistance and targets the entire Palestinian community. Therefore, it is our duty to form a national resistance front to sustain the historical field confrontation and comprehensive resistance against the occupation, within Palestine and alongside supportive fronts against the brutal aggression. Secondly: Abu Ali Mustafa is a model of the Palestinian school in both word and deed, where the homeland stands above all factional or personal considerations. For him, national unity was neither a luxury nor empty talk, but has become a national necessity in the era of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, representing a liberating awareness that shook the pillars of the zionist entity, exposing its weakness and our people’s ability to defeat it. This drove it to resort to a frenzied colonial campaign to suppress the resistant consciousness. We renew our call to repel the aggression with popular and national unity and the unity of our heroic resistance, based on a broad national front, a unified national vision, and strategy that unleashes our people’s latent energies and engages them in the existential battle, leading our people in this struggle and providing the requirements for their steadfastness, in support of the critical epic that our people and resistance forces are fighting in all their locations and on various Arab and international fronts.Thirdly: Abu Ali Mustafa, the visionary leader, teaches us how to hold onto goals and rights, placing the right before the solution, the goal before the means, and the permanent over the temporary. National priorities should be set based on shared objectives and essential needs dictated by the historical moment. We may find ourselves facing the main task of re-evaluating and conducting a comprehensive national political review, resulting in a new national Palestinian vision.
Today, the national priority lies in implementing the “Beijing Declaration” by calling for the temporary leadership framework and immediately beginning the work of rebuilding national institutions, foremost among them the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Procrastination, wasting time, and waiting will not serve the national interest but will instead contribute to the liquidation projects and benefit those who bet on the Americans, zionists, and their accomplices among the reactionaries and Arab normalizers. Fourth: Abu Ali Mustafa was filled with confidence in the inevitability of victory, building a culture of hope in the face of a culture of despair and pessimism, maintaining optimism in times of pessimism, and nurturing a positive spirit against negativity. We face systematic attacks on our existence in Gaza, the West Bank, and everywhere, with attempts to dry up our camps through policies of displacement, killing, and destruction—an organized aggression on the existence of the Palestinian people, in Palestine and its surroundings, aimed at scattering the Palestinian people and leading them to deadly and destructive individual choices from Gaza to Al-Quds and the West Bank. Our collective and national duty is to protect Palestinian existence and preserve the Palestinian national identity from being diluted, thwarting the military, political, and strategic goals of the aggressors. Fifth: Abu Ali Mustafa, a founding leader, viewed the struggle between us and the zionist enemy as a historical, comprehensive, and open struggle, tied to the nature and essence of the enemy and its goals of denying the physical and spiritual existence of the Palestinian people in their homeland, and establishing the so-called “Jewish state”, fully supported by global imperialist powers, primarily the United States. Given its role as the advanced base in the Arab world, Comrade Abu Ali’s vision of the struggle was not limited to viewing it as merely between the Palestinian people and the “israeli” occupation. He fundamentally saw it as a struggle between the entire Arab nation, along with its vital forces, and the zionist enemy, which seeks to dominate and control the entire region, its resources, and its wealth, subjecting it entirely to its imperialist and colonial ambitions. The scope of this struggle touches all the peoples of our nation, as it is a defense of their existence, which is threatened by the collaboration of normalization regimes with the zionist project and their readiness to accept its dominance over the entire region. These regimes are betting on the defeat of the Palestinian people and their resistance, which remains the first line of defense for the Arab nation, its peoples, states, and the security of the Arab individual and the Arab nation in all its dimensions and meanings. The free people of the world, especially in the Western colonial center, must reject and condemn the brutal war of genocide and the Western partnership in it, intensifying the struggle against the war criminals and those who support the genocide, while supporting the just cause of our people, their struggle, and their legitimate resistance with all available tools. Pledge, loyalty, and glory to you, our martyr General Secretary Abu Ali Mustafa, son of the school of Al-Hakim, Al-Wadie, Guevara of Gaza, and Ghassan Kanafani. Glory to the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and to the makers of the great October 17th. Immortality to the martyrs, Freedom to our leader Ahmad Sa’adat and all our brave prisoners, Victory to the resistance. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Central Media OfficeAugust 27, 2024
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Still don't know where to put it. Replace a pedal or shoehorn it in?
The screamer has more mids, and the klone has much more boost, and each breaks up differently. Then there's the Spark boost at the end of the chain. I could replace that.
I'll need to play different guitars through it with the amp and other pedals set different ways.
I don't like choosing. This is why I have a messy room.
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Challenge the status quo, embrace discomfort, and watch as the boundaries of possibility expand. In a world of conformity, rebellion is the spark of innovation and rebirth.
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Under the limelight's gaze, our 'Princes of Glam' are the spark that ignites the dance floor. 🔥✨ Ready for a night that outshines the stars?
#PrinceOfGlam #StarryNights #Gay #GayBoy #GayGuy #AIArt #AICommunity #StableDiffusion #StableDiffusionBoys #Glam #StayingAlive #Homopolitan_ai -
Under the limelight's gaze, our 'Princes of Glam' are the spark that ignites the dance floor. 🔥✨ Ready for a night that outshines the stars?
#PrinceOfGlam #StarryNights #Gay #GayBoy #GayGuy #AIArt #AICommunity #StableDiffusion #StableDiffusionBoys #Glam #StayingAlive #Homopolitan_ai -
Under the limelight's gaze, our 'Princes of Glam' are the spark that ignites the dance floor. 🔥✨ Ready for a night that outshines the stars?
#PrinceOfGlam #StarryNights #Gay #GayBoy #GayGuy #AIArt #AICommunity #StableDiffusion #StableDiffusionBoys #Glam #StayingAlive #Homopolitan_ai -
In un villaggio irlandese sul mare, il dramma di un'adolescente, e di una famiglia.
Senso di colpa, perdita e inadeguatezza che si fondono.📝Voto: 6
"The sparrow" di Michael Kinirons, 92minuti, 2022. -
+ it has been the most challenging work day but it finished with an email from a former boss, asking if I had some time to do a bit of freelancing for him and damn, if that wasn't just the spark I needed in this moment
+ beautiful sunset, truly some amazing colours. What a blessing to see it (I tried to take a picture but it was meh compared to the real thing so you'll have to take my word for it)
+ we have enough to eat today, and for the next several days. This isn't such an unusual thing – we almost always have enough to eat – it's just good to have that reassurance of enough food
#ThreeGoodThings #3GoodThings #gratitude #food #nature #work
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New #ebook @gutenberg_org: The spark of Skeeter Bill by W. C. Tuttle https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78698
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NEW EPISODE: Here's a review of the next in the Old Man's War sequence, book 3, The Last Colony. Does the series begin to go stale, or does Scalzi rekindle the spark? Come find out how this military sci-fi novel lands. #SciFi #SFF #bookreview #oldmanswar https://youtu.be/l0r7zpzIiE0
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A Baby In the Forest : An Echoes Excerpt
Echoes of a Wild Girl’s Drum is the upcoming novel that will be released this Summer.
Born beneath the shadow of a witch fire, Soryelle learns early that in her village, fear is more powerful than truth.
After watching her mother burn, she grows up on the edges of a remote Papua New Guinea highland clan, surviving on scraps and silence. When the villagers accuse her of carrying the same curse, only one boy dares to see her for what she is: not a witch, but a wild-hearted girl who still believes in hidden places, healing roots, and the possibility of love. Together, Soryelle and Maikel create Kavaru, a secret refuge deep in the forest where the world cannot reach them.
But Maikel is the village drummer, bound to the very rhythms that condemn her.
When Soryelle escapes into the jungle, she is forced to become something both fierce and untamed. The forest raises her. The village continues to hunt her. Years later, she returns carrying a child born of violence and a growing determination to expose the truth buried beneath the clan’s sacred traditions.
As suspicion rises and the feared glasman tightens his grip, Maikel must choose between obedience and the girl he has loved since childhood. To save her daughter and shatter the lies that have ruled their world, he will have to break the rhythm of the drum once and for all.
A sweeping tale of survival, forbidden love, and the courage to speak when silence has become law, Echoes of a Wild Girl’s Drum is a haunting and unforgettable story about the cost of fear and the fierce, stubborn beat of hope.
For me, writing this story has been a whirlwind of intense research into a fascinating country full of amazing creatures (my daughter says the tree kangaroo is one of her favorite animals now!) and heartbreaking superstitions. This excerpt opens section two, The Hollow Drum. Soryelle is 16 here and has lived 9 years in the forest alone.
Please be careful: this excerpt does contain material that could be triggering. Please make sure you are safe before you read.
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The third strike brings the spark. Quickly, I lay tiny twigs and leaves around the spark, feeding it.
I am very careful about where I build fire. The sound of shouting men; their running feet made thunder in the ground. “Smoke!” I was little then. Little enough that I didn’t think about the villagers seeing smoke. We’ll cover our tracks to show the dragon’s home respect; we leave it as we find it. The memory of Maikel raking dirt over our footprints was the only reason I thought to do the same. I ran, and ran, trying to outrun the villagers. Through branches, their spears looked long and sharp.
I ran to the waterfall… but I knew Bigman would want to search the woods to find who built the fire. He might see other footprints. And, if they had caught me… so I gripped the mossy log with both hands, eased up on it. Holding my arms out on both sides, I edged my way out over the water. I’m right here. Maikel’s voice pushed me to walk. I fell off the log, and almost panicked. I stayed close to the log, using my fingers to grip it and pull myself forward, kicking my legs because it was the only thing I could do.
Somehow, I made it to the other side.
Crawling out of the water, soaked, I looked across the waterfall at the darker woods of Kavaru. I could hear the men, so I tried to find a place to hide. The glade felt more open, brighter, than the woods of Kavaru; walking through it, my head lifted, my eyes widened… I felt seen. Until I found the cave. Deep, dark and small. No signs of markings; animals had not claimed it. So, I did.
I hid there.
No one crossed the log; no one saw footprints I forgot to hide. Except one. You think you’re so smart; they will kill you when they find you. But they haven’t. And now I build fire by the cave. Even he isn’t sure where the smoke comes from. They think it’s villagers of a neighboring tribe traveling. It’s not, is it? I never answer.
I don’t speak at all anymore.
I left my voice at the stake.
My breath curls white in the air. The dew soaks the grass and numbs my feet. Fire before daybreak is worth the risk in the dark. The wet season means I am rarely dry, the ground is rarely dry, and I shiver until daybreak without the fire.
I breathe in sharply, quickly, through my nose, my hand curling around my rounded stomach. The pain grows stronger. When the sun disappeared, it was not like this. The clenching makes me grunt, my eyebrows furrow across my brow. Instead of fifty breaths, they come now every thirty.
It is coming.
But not here. My babe will be born in Kavaru.
The fire crackles, sparks flying into the night air. I pluck a leech off my arm. When I stand to place a log onto the flames, another cramp attacks. The pain makes me lock my elbow against my stomach, doubling over. The tools. The tools are in Kavaru. That was twenty-seven breaths. Panic rises. Instead of placing the log on the flame, I gather handfuls of dirt, throwing it into the fire. It only takes me moments to choke the flames.
The rushing of the waterfall grows louder as I walk quickly across the wet, muddy ground towards it. The openness of the glade shrinks the closer the waterfall gets. I close my eyes, staring at the log, inhale deeply and slowly, through my nose. I can hear my heart.
I know the risks.
The pain may come while I’m on the log; it may be strong enough to knock me into the water. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, glance behind me towards the darkened glade, then look across the dark water towards home. I’m safe here. I can do this here. Your mother used this, he said that as he passed a handful of ginger. And you’ll need these. The sharpened bamboo blade. These lie at the base of Kavaru.
I step, the moss cool and slick against the soles of my feet. I cross this log many times—the glade has banana trees and guava. Sugarcane grows by the waterfall on that side. I can cross it now.
Twenty.
The pain feels sharper, almost like wild pigs charging through my belly instead of a vine being twisted. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… I grunt, my shoulders curving. You will never do that again, do you understand? The force of the blow to my face knocked my head sideways. I didn’t bite him on purpose; my jaw just locked, my teeth trying to keep him out. I shake my head once, hard, push my feet to keep moving. The moment my toes touch the wet ground, relief bursts through me.
Home.
The wet months mean the whole forest is a muddy landslide. Climbing up the small embankment makes me slip and slide down to the bottom. I notice the duiker’s prints: they look fresh. I glance around, but the animals hide. Kavaru is darker than the glade; the canopy thicker, moonlight streams in broken beams through rare patches.
Thirteen. The pain rips through me like a python squeezing until I cannot draw a breath. It pushes me to my knees, my fingers digging into the wet soil beneath the Kavaru tree. The strong cord I pulled from bark lies nearby, the sharpened bamboo blade he bought, and the small woven bilum. It’ll need to travel. Fear collects in the pit of my chest, spreads through my whole body until I feel both cold and flushed. His hand pushes inside, hard, again and again, and I twist, trying to get away but there’s no where to go, so I use my fist to hit his shoulder, pounding the white scar as many times as he pounds me.
The urge to push swoops through my body like angry birds. It isn’t just fear that shoves me forward, my belly contracting with the strength of my push. Something is inside me; something as always been inside me. My fingers shake as they move inward, trying to feel what’s happening to me. I can’t count my breaths anymore because they’re coming so fast, one after the other, fast like my heartbeat. The waves hit me like the waterfall in flood season; they are impossible to stop.
To keep from screaming, I twist my head sideways and bite my upper arm. The very center of my body feels swollen and on fire. It feels like I’m being pried apart. The worst of the pain comes as I bear down, pushing harder, biting my skin until the metallic taste of blood swells on my tongue.
Something shifts in the trees. Two round eyes shine from the branches above me. A cuscus clings to the tree. Its stillness makes me want to scream: how can something be still when my insides are on fire? She watches as she watches everything: still, quiet, curious.
I fall back, my eyes feverishly looking for the patch of sky. There – there it is; three stars tonight. I stare at the brightest, pushing again and again, holding my breath, my elbows cracking the earth beneath me and then…just as suddenly, my palm feels something. Wet and round, small enough my palm curves around it entirely.
My breath catches. I force myself to bear down, hard, harder than ever before, my breath held between fear and awe. My fingers move as the baby slides out, all at once, into my hands.
I tremble, tears blur my eyes.
The baby doesn’t cry. I hum, using one hand to pat the ground. I know it’s here, I saw it where was it? Panic stills my thoughts, as I hold the baby’s head between my legs with one hand and use the other to frantically search. When my fingers hit something smooth and sharp, I breathe. There it is: the bamboo blade.
I lay the baby on my skin, grasping the vine connecting us. It’s thick, as thick as my finger, and pulsing like a small, frightened heartbeat. It’s thicker than I thought it would be, warm and slick. When I press the bamboo blade to it, the fibers, tough as a wet vine, resist, push back. My body tightens, as though it can keep him out. The sharpened blade slips against my wet hand. The baby still doesn’t breathe, so I saw faster until it gives way with a soft, rubbery snap.
My fingers drop the blade, and I pick the baby up, hoisting to my chest, panic surging through me. The joey didn’t cry. Hidden beneath the brush, the tree kangaroo licked its face again and again. I sweep my fingers through the baby’s mouth, turn it downward and pat its back while my fingers tremble. Its skin is wrinkly, the color of dry dirt. Suddenly, I hear it: a tiny, wobbly cry. When I turn the baby over, my eyes sweep down.
A daughter.
My baby is a girl.
Something shifts deep inside of me.
The cry becomes stronger. Gently, I offer her my breast. Wet mucus still clings to her; I’ll clean her like the tree kangaroo cleans her young. When she latches on, I feel her tiny fingers curl against my breast, and my heart skips a beat. Pulling a banana leaf near, I wrap her in it, then I pull the bottom of my dress up. It’s blood-stained, darker at the edges with fluid, but it will give a little more warmth. Leaning against the Kavaru tree, I tip my head back. The faint outline of a spiral catches my eye.
I glance down at her again just in time to see her eyes open. They are brown like wet chestnut bark, round and…alive. They glisten, and in them I see something I’d forgotten until this moment.
A small girl with black hair and wide eyes jumps back, surprised, laughing out loud when the village’s dog leaps up, putting its paws on her shoulders and licking her face. A little girl laughing as a woman, her mother, nuzzles her neck with kisses. A girl’s midnight black strands whip across her face as she rises to her toes and spins; a boy watches her and says, “I wished for another dance.” A girl staring at the full night sky from the top of a tree, saying there were “a hundred million” stars.
My eyes blink. When I touch the tips of her finger, she wraps it around mine. The tiny finger curled around my dirty one makes my heart light up like the glow worms. I’ve told you – don’t touch my baby ever again.
She killed my baby!
Fear spirals in my belly, but I can’t pull my finger from beneath hers. She has a small dent in the center of her chin, and no hair. I snuggle her closer, absently pat her back. The owl cries from somewhere deep in the forest; the cuscus slowly moves back against the bark, out of sight, and the crickets sing. I stay so still, and I stare at this baby long after she closes her eyes in sleep. When the owl makes its last call and I hear the distant boom…boomboom…boom of the Heartbeat call, I’m still staring at my daughter.
You’re of course not capable of being a mother. I’ll take it somewhere it will be safe when it comes. My foot taps rapidly against the soil. I hold her rocking back and forth, patting her bottom. I will not carry her over my shoulder. Slung over his shoulder, all I could see was his back and the ground. Dust disturbed as his meet lifted, fell. I want her to see the sky, not just the ground. He hasn’t come yet, but he will. He will. And, when he does, he’ll take her.
The sound of his laugh chills me. You’re shaking your head like you have a choice. This isn’t your baby. It’s mine. You’re just the way it gets here. This last time, his voice in my ear as he hurt me, turned soft. You want it, don’t you? The baby? Been a long time since you ate a baby’s heart, hasn’t it? Did I do that? Sometimes my brain feels like the early morning mist—foggy, and I can’t remember.
But it’s not foggy about some things.
Ash from when they burned Nángi still paints my toes. I don’t know where to go. The butcher doesn’t want me sleeping in the alley. The apothecary said it made villagers nervous when they saw me sleeping in front of the shop. The grass behind the Spirit House makes scary dreams, and the worn path by the village well smells funny. I saw a snake bigger than me there one time. I tried sleeping in the burnt circle, where the hut was, but it makes me cry too hard cause I can hear Nángi there. The meadow is too wet, and too open. It makes me shake like leaves when spaces are too big. The only place left is the here; the quiet patch inside the tree line.
I listen for wild pigs. Sometimes, I think I hear them, and then I run back into the village and sleep by the courtyard. Bigman says no, I can’t sleep there. He says if there was a raid on the village, no one needs someone in the way of the gate. It’s not safe, that’s what he said.
The foggy part comes back. My body fights to remember but what happened first or third or last is hard hazy. The forest is dark. Can’t even see streaks of the moon. Nighttime birds call; I call back. A hand – big, hairy, the hairs were black and not soft – pulls me deeper into the woods. You’re mine now, like your mama was. Smoke and dust heavy in the air. His face changes when I twist, try to pull away, and he jerks. “Better learn now—you don’t pull away from me.” He pulls away the strap that holds his woven covering. There’s ginger growing there. It’s low to the ground, as if it hides a secret. I stare at its wide and shiny leaves; they’re shaped like fat hearts painted with rain and smooth, like the skin of the frog. I can only see the flower because I’m lying on the ground.
How am I on the ground? Arm. Pulled. The flash of the canopy turning sideways above me. When he grips my chin, it hurts. I cry. His fingers dig into my skin. He says something but it’s muffled under the water in my brain. Water sloshes. Slosh, slosh, slosh. That’s what words sound like here. The leaves are louder. The crickets are louder.
When his fingers push under my dress, hurting me until I can’t see anything else, until I start screaming, “No, I don’t want to. Stop!” Does fire burn like this? He tells me to “…shut up” but I can’t, I can’t.
“Honeysuckle blooms where fear gets in, ginger for the shaking—”
My eyes find the flower again, the ginger. Ginver stops the shaking. Would it stop the shaking of my body? The way the damp soil rubs against my back, the way the trees bend and shake real fast while he grunts like wild pig. Wild pigs might eat me. The ginger flower don’t grow toward the sky.
It hides, round and chubby, like an animal sleeping with its mouth half open. Ginger is the a dark red but the blood is bright when he sticks me with something hard. I jerk my eyes off the ginger and scream again. He pushes his palm against my throat. I think he’s pushing me into the ground. Am I going to disappear into the ground like Nángi?
“Stop singing, stop screaming, just be still,” his voice sounds like rocks striking each other. “The ginger flower is like a secret cave.” I can’t find the ginger. I can’t find it. The air gets trapped in my throat; I can feel my heartbeat pulsing against his fingers. Then – there it is. The ginger again. “It’s a secret cave for fairies.” That’s what Nángi says. “Scratch the root, like this, and smell it—what’s it smell like?’ His breath is hot, heavy, and smells like dust and smoke. No. The ginger. Ginger smells spicy and warm. Peppery. I twist my head, trying to smell something other than dust, something other than the smoke of fire, but I can’t.
I shake hard when he leaves.
“Your blood – little witches like you need new blood. Yours is poisoned. I gave you new blood, so you’ll thank me.”
I scramble away, pulling the edge of my torn dress down, my eyes sticking to the blood soaking into the soil, staining between my legs. My blood is coming out. My breath hitches high, my heart pounds, and I start to scream. His hand comes down hard, clamps over my mouth. “Swallow it.”
I swallow hard, past the lump in my throat. Tears fall from my nose onto his hand over my mouth, I scoot back further, trying to breathe, but my grips the back of my head, holding me still. I think I’m dying.
Where do dead people go?
Will he eat my heart?
My mind drifts again, my eyes floating up, up, up to the treetops. Something moves in the branches; a spot of fur. I stare, trying to see it, his voice fading until all I can hear is the wind whistling in the trees. I don’t know what he says, but he leaves. I squeeze my legs together, tight until the muscles ache. If I don’t, more blood might come out. And I sing. I forget some of the words, though, but it helps slow the tears until I can breathe.
Hold me when the dark wind cries, little star up high
Little star, don’t go, stay where I can see
If the shadows… something, something… little star, hold me
Honeysuckle blooms where fear gets in, ginger for the shaking
Something,…she just walks, she just something, something
Hold me little star, little star up high, hold me.
My legs clench first, like they know something comes. Then my teeth grind, and my arms start shaking. When I look at my daughter’s eyes, I remember girl, trying to find ginger and honeysuckle. He will come. He will come and take her. And, if he takes her, I’ll never see her.
I step over branches, shielding her head with my elbow. I’ll take it somewhere. Where? He rubs me into the ground; sometimes he uses leather against my skin and, if I try to move, he squeezes my neck until the stars fall from the sky.
She cries.
I offer her my breast, but she doesn’t latch. I bounce my arms, humming. I can’t sleep. Every time my eyes start to drift, I worry about an animal finding us. Would a cassowary peck her? What if I didn’t hear the pigs in time? What if I don’t hear him?
When she cries, I split a short length of sugarcane with the bamboo blade and chew one end until it softens. When I press it to her mouth, a bead of sweetness touches her tongue. Her cries hitch, then soften into smaller sounds.
We’re very close now. I need her to be quiet.
There – there’s the Clan Mother’s hut. Smoke rises from her chimney as the sun begins its descent. The door to the hut is closed, but the window is open. I see her through the window, her arm pulling a basket off a shelf.
There were baskets in our huts. Baskets and bottles of herbs.
The baby wiggles, a tiny cry comes. I shift, offer her my nipple, rubbing it against her mouth until she opens, latches on, tugs. My eyes move back to the hut. The Clan Mother sits now. I can only see her face. I can’t see her hands, but I’ve watched her long enough that I know she’s sewing something. Or maybe mixing something.
Something makes her look up; I ease back, deeper into the forest, but where I can still see her. She shifts, stands. Opens her door and stares out at the woods. I barely breathe. Only when she turns and retreats inside do I close my eyes and exhale, my shoulders dropping.
My daughter’s hand flails in the air, lands against my chest. She clasps my finger in hers, gripping tight.
My own chin quivers.
A cassowary bird stands amid lush greenery in a tropical forestI began this work before the rain came, before I felt her tiny movements in my belly. I pulled long strips of bark from trees and kept them inside the teepee until they dried. Weaving them together was harder than I thought it would be. Several pieces of bark snapped; so did pieces of the vine. Some animals, likely birds, stole other pieces of bark for nest building. I press large banana leaves into the basket, layering it for extra softness.
He came last night.
I held the baby close to me, and wouldn’t put her down. He told me to give her to him, but the thought of her in his arms broke something deep inside of me. I don’t want to lose her. My chest feels empty without the weight of her small head against it; my tender breasts feel heavy and ache unless she is fed. I thought I’d see him in her face, but I don’t. She is mine.
But I cannot keep her.
“Alright,” his voice was amused. “You can have her tonight. I’ll make arrangements. That will be better for the village. When I come back, she goes with me.”
I swallow hard.
My hands tremble as I lift her weight away from my skin and lay her gently in the basket I’ve made. She wiggles, fusses, but quiets when I hum and give her my finger to hold. My eyes fall to the strip of grey cloth. It’s the only part left of the grey blanket the Clan Mother laid before me while I was strapped to the stake.
Nángi stood close to the Clan Mother; they clasped hands.
I pick her up from the basket, let her rest against my skin, rising to my feet. She won’t be dirty like me. Her blood won’t be tainted. The pool feels like the sky melted into the mountains; cool enough to sting. Too cold for her. But I dip my hand into it, swirl my fingers, then lift and gently wash her tiny face. Her rounded cheeks, her button nose, the starlike mark that matches mine near her eye, the small dent in her chin. I hold her tiny fist in mine, gently pushing my finger between hers to open her hand so I can wash her palm. She gurgles, her feet kicking against me, her other hand flailing.
I lift the end of my dress, wrap her in it, dry and warm her. The sound of my rumbling stomach makes me wonder if she’s hungry; I don’t want her to be hungry. I tell myself it’s time but I think about the weather. When the sun dips, it becomes cool here. Will she be warm enough in the basket? She’s always had the heat of my skin. She’s never known a night without it. Since she was born, I’ve never known a night without her against me.
But building a fire in Kavaru is too risky.
People might see.
When we get back to the tree, I wrap her in layers of banana and pandanus leaves, tucking the edges around her. I hold her in my arms because I want to remember her weight and carry the basket with other hand. I’ve waited as long as I can. He can come back at any time.
Stepping out from the tree line makes my heart beat fast. They think I’m dead. I haven’t been out of the woods in nine winters. Only he knows I’m alive. Feeling the air rush across my skin, my eyes never stop moving. The sky cries, its colors spread across the horizon in orange, yellow, and purple. The Clan Mother lives apart from the village; no other hut stands beside hers.
I close my eyes, count my breaths: one, two, three.
I bend and sit the basket in front of the door. The baby’s eyes are closed. Her stomach full, her body bathed and swaddled. When I lie her in the basket, her head turns toward me, her hand rises in the air, searching. I reach my finger out and she grips it, as she always does, pulls it to her mouth. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and almost pick the basket up and run back home.
But, if I do that, she will know him.
I clenched my legs together so tightly the muscles ached. I couldn’t sleep for fear that, if I drifted into slumber, my legs would loosen and I’d bleed to death.
No. The word feels strange, even in my thoughts. I don’t know its shape. But I know I can’t live without knowing where she is. Gently, slowly, I pull my finger from her grasp, bend down, and press my lips to her forehead. The sound of the Clan Mother moving inside pulls me upright. I turn, run.
Only when I am safely behind the trees do I take a deep breath and then make a guttural sound loud. “Boom. Boom. Boom.” I picture a cassowary stomping across the meadow and I wait.
When nothing happens, I call again—“Boom. Boom. Boom” — mimicking the cassowary’s loud, bellowing sound. It vibrates across the short distance from the tree line. I shift and start to call again when I see the Clan Mother in the window. A moment later, the door opens.
She stares down at the basket, looks up and around.
She steps out of the hut, walks two steps towards the woods. Carefully, silently, I move back. The baby’s cry turns her around. When she leans down, all I can see is her back; my breath catches in my throat.
One more glance, I beg silently. I just want one more glance. Please turn around. Then she does, and I see her cradling the baby as I have. She bounces it, her eyes looking out toward the trees. She pauses, then picks up the basket, and steps back inside. When she closes the door, I stare at the window, my breath held.
But I don’t see her—she doesn’t come to the window. I wait and wait until the sky darkens and my skin shivers. Only then do I turn to walk back into Kavaru. Only when I am near the tree again does a memory strike me like a drum: the missing last words of the lullaby: she just walks, she just booms.
#abuse #blogging #books #fiction #inspiration #life #love #motherhood #romance #shortStory #survival #trauma #witchcraft #women #Writing -
A Baby In the Forest : An Echoes Excerpt
Echoes of a Wild Girl’s Drum is the upcoming novel that will be released this Summer.
Born beneath the shadow of a witch fire, Soryelle learns early that in her village, fear is more powerful than truth.
After watching her mother burn, she grows up on the edges of a remote Papua New Guinea highland clan, surviving on scraps and silence. When the villagers accuse her of carrying the same curse, only one boy dares to see her for what she is: not a witch, but a wild-hearted girl who still believes in hidden places, healing roots, and the possibility of love. Together, Soryelle and Maikel create Kavaru, a secret refuge deep in the forest where the world cannot reach them.
But Maikel is the village drummer, bound to the very rhythms that condemn her.
When Soryelle escapes into the jungle, she is forced to become something both fierce and untamed. The forest raises her. The village continues to hunt her. Years later, she returns carrying a child born of violence and a growing determination to expose the truth buried beneath the clan’s sacred traditions.
As suspicion rises and the feared glasman tightens his grip, Maikel must choose between obedience and the girl he has loved since childhood. To save her daughter and shatter the lies that have ruled their world, he will have to break the rhythm of the drum once and for all.
A sweeping tale of survival, forbidden love, and the courage to speak when silence has become law, Echoes of a Wild Girl’s Drum is a haunting and unforgettable story about the cost of fear and the fierce, stubborn beat of hope.
For me, writing this story has been a whirlwind of intense research into a fascinating country full of amazing creatures (my daughter says the tree kangaroo is one of her favorite animals now!) and heartbreaking superstitions. This excerpt opens section two, The Hollow Drum. Soryelle is 16 here and has lived 9 years in the forest alone.
Please be careful: this excerpt does contain material that could be triggering. Please make sure you are safe before you read.
—
The third strike brings the spark. Quickly, I lay tiny twigs and leaves around the spark, feeding it.
I am very careful about where I build fire. The sound of shouting men; their running feet made thunder in the ground. “Smoke!” I was little then. Little enough that I didn’t think about the villagers seeing smoke. We’ll cover our tracks to show the dragon’s home respect; we leave it as we find it. The memory of Maikel raking dirt over our footprints was the only reason I thought to do the same. I ran, and ran, trying to outrun the villagers. Through branches, their spears looked long and sharp.
I ran to the waterfall… but I knew Bigman would want to search the woods to find who built the fire. He might see other footprints. And, if they had caught me… so I gripped the mossy log with both hands, eased up on it. Holding my arms out on both sides, I edged my way out over the water. I’m right here. Maikel’s voice pushed me to walk. I fell off the log, and almost panicked. I stayed close to the log, using my fingers to grip it and pull myself forward, kicking my legs because it was the only thing I could do.
Somehow, I made it to the other side.
Crawling out of the water, soaked, I looked across the waterfall at the darker woods of Kavaru. I could hear the men, so I tried to find a place to hide. The glade felt more open, brighter, than the woods of Kavaru; walking through it, my head lifted, my eyes widened… I felt seen. Until I found the cave. Deep, dark and small. No signs of markings; animals had not claimed it. So, I did.
I hid there.
No one crossed the log; no one saw footprints I forgot to hide. Except one. You think you’re so smart; they will kill you when they find you. But they haven’t. And now I build fire by the cave. Even he isn’t sure where the smoke comes from. They think it’s villagers of a neighboring tribe traveling. It’s not, is it? I never answer.
I don’t speak at all anymore.
I left my voice at the stake.
My breath curls white in the air. The dew soaks the grass and numbs my feet. Fire before daybreak is worth the risk in the dark. The wet season means I am rarely dry, the ground is rarely dry, and I shiver until daybreak without the fire.
I breathe in sharply, quickly, through my nose, my hand curling around my rounded stomach. The pain grows stronger. When the sun disappeared, it was not like this. The clenching makes me grunt, my eyebrows furrow across my brow. Instead of fifty breaths, they come now every thirty.
It is coming.
But not here. My babe will be born in Kavaru.
The fire crackles, sparks flying into the night air. I pluck a leech off my arm. When I stand to place a log onto the flames, another cramp attacks. The pain makes me lock my elbow against my stomach, doubling over. The tools. The tools are in Kavaru. That was twenty-seven breaths. Panic rises. Instead of placing the log on the flame, I gather handfuls of dirt, throwing it into the fire. It only takes me moments to choke the flames.
The rushing of the waterfall grows louder as I walk quickly across the wet, muddy ground towards it. The openness of the glade shrinks the closer the waterfall gets. I close my eyes, staring at the log, inhale deeply and slowly, through my nose. I can hear my heart.
I know the risks.
The pain may come while I’m on the log; it may be strong enough to knock me into the water. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, glance behind me towards the darkened glade, then look across the dark water towards home. I’m safe here. I can do this here. Your mother used this, he said that as he passed a handful of ginger. And you’ll need these. The sharpened bamboo blade. These lie at the base of Kavaru.
I step, the moss cool and slick against the soles of my feet. I cross this log many times—the glade has banana trees and guava. Sugarcane grows by the waterfall on that side. I can cross it now.
Twenty.
The pain feels sharper, almost like wild pigs charging through my belly instead of a vine being twisted. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… I grunt, my shoulders curving. You will never do that again, do you understand? The force of the blow to my face knocked my head sideways. I didn’t bite him on purpose; my jaw just locked, my teeth trying to keep him out. I shake my head once, hard, push my feet to keep moving. The moment my toes touch the wet ground, relief bursts through me.
Home.
The wet months mean the whole forest is a muddy landslide. Climbing up the small embankment makes me slip and slide down to the bottom. I notice the duiker’s prints: they look fresh. I glance around, but the animals hide. Kavaru is darker than the glade; the canopy thicker, moonlight streams in broken beams through rare patches.
Thirteen. The pain rips through me like a python squeezing until I cannot draw a breath. It pushes me to my knees, my fingers digging into the wet soil beneath the Kavaru tree. The strong cord I pulled from bark lies nearby, the sharpened bamboo blade he bought, and the small woven bilum. It’ll need to travel. Fear collects in the pit of my chest, spreads through my whole body until I feel both cold and flushed. His hand pushes inside, hard, again and again, and I twist, trying to get away but there’s no where to go, so I use my fist to hit his shoulder, pounding the white scar as many times as he pounds me.
The urge to push swoops through my body like angry birds. It isn’t just fear that shoves me forward, my belly contracting with the strength of my push. Something is inside me; something as always been inside me. My fingers shake as they move inward, trying to feel what’s happening to me. I can’t count my breaths anymore because they’re coming so fast, one after the other, fast like my heartbeat. The waves hit me like the waterfall in flood season; they are impossible to stop.
To keep from screaming, I twist my head sideways and bite my upper arm. The very center of my body feels swollen and on fire. It feels like I’m being pried apart. The worst of the pain comes as I bear down, pushing harder, biting my skin until the metallic taste of blood swells on my tongue.
Something shifts in the trees. Two round eyes shine from the branches above me. A cuscus clings to the tree. Its stillness makes me want to scream: how can something be still when my insides are on fire? She watches as she watches everything: still, quiet, curious.
I fall back, my eyes feverishly looking for the patch of sky. There – there it is; three stars tonight. I stare at the brightest, pushing again and again, holding my breath, my elbows cracking the earth beneath me and then…just as suddenly, my palm feels something. Wet and round, small enough my palm curves around it entirely.
My breath catches. I force myself to bear down, hard, harder than ever before, my breath held between fear and awe. My fingers move as the baby slides out, all at once, into my hands.
I tremble, tears blur my eyes.
The baby doesn’t cry. I hum, using one hand to pat the ground. I know it’s here, I saw it where was it? Panic stills my thoughts, as I hold the baby’s head between my legs with one hand and use the other to frantically search. When my fingers hit something smooth and sharp, I breathe. There it is: the bamboo blade.
I lay the baby on my skin, grasping the vine connecting us. It’s thick, as thick as my finger, and pulsing like a small, frightened heartbeat. It’s thicker than I thought it would be, warm and slick. When I press the bamboo blade to it, the fibers, tough as a wet vine, resist, push back. My body tightens, as though it can keep him out. The sharpened blade slips against my wet hand. The baby still doesn’t breathe, so I saw faster until it gives way with a soft, rubbery snap.
My fingers drop the blade, and I pick the baby up, hoisting to my chest, panic surging through me. The joey didn’t cry. Hidden beneath the brush, the tree kangaroo licked its face again and again. I sweep my fingers through the baby’s mouth, turn it downward and pat its back while my fingers tremble. Its skin is wrinkly, the color of dry dirt. Suddenly, I hear it: a tiny, wobbly cry. When I turn the baby over, my eyes sweep down.
A daughter.
My baby is a girl.
Something shifts deep inside of me.
The cry becomes stronger. Gently, I offer her my breast. Wet mucus still clings to her; I’ll clean her like the tree kangaroo cleans her young. When she latches on, I feel her tiny fingers curl against my breast, and my heart skips a beat. Pulling a banana leaf near, I wrap her in it, then I pull the bottom of my dress up. It’s blood-stained, darker at the edges with fluid, but it will give a little more warmth. Leaning against the Kavaru tree, I tip my head back. The faint outline of a spiral catches my eye.
I glance down at her again just in time to see her eyes open. They are brown like wet chestnut bark, round and…alive. They glisten, and in them I see something I’d forgotten until this moment.
A small girl with black hair and wide eyes jumps back, surprised, laughing out loud when the village’s dog leaps up, putting its paws on her shoulders and licking her face. A little girl laughing as a woman, her mother, nuzzles her neck with kisses. A girl’s midnight black strands whip across her face as she rises to her toes and spins; a boy watches her and says, “I wished for another dance.” A girl staring at the full night sky from the top of a tree, saying there were “a hundred million” stars.
My eyes blink. When I touch the tips of her finger, she wraps it around mine. The tiny finger curled around my dirty one makes my heart light up like the glow worms. I’ve told you – don’t touch my baby ever again.
She killed my baby!
Fear spirals in my belly, but I can’t pull my finger from beneath hers. She has a small dent in the center of her chin, and no hair. I snuggle her closer, absently pat her back. The owl cries from somewhere deep in the forest; the cuscus slowly moves back against the bark, out of sight, and the crickets sing. I stay so still, and I stare at this baby long after she closes her eyes in sleep. When the owl makes its last call and I hear the distant boom…boomboom…boom of the Heartbeat call, I’m still staring at my daughter.
You’re of course not capable of being a mother. I’ll take it somewhere it will be safe when it comes. My foot taps rapidly against the soil. I hold her rocking back and forth, patting her bottom. I will not carry her over my shoulder. Slung over his shoulder, all I could see was his back and the ground. Dust disturbed as his meet lifted, fell. I want her to see the sky, not just the ground. He hasn’t come yet, but he will. He will. And, when he does, he’ll take her.
The sound of his laugh chills me. You’re shaking your head like you have a choice. This isn’t your baby. It’s mine. You’re just the way it gets here. This last time, his voice in my ear as he hurt me, turned soft. You want it, don’t you? The baby? Been a long time since you ate a baby’s heart, hasn’t it? Did I do that? Sometimes my brain feels like the early morning mist—foggy, and I can’t remember.
But it’s not foggy about some things.
Ash from when they burned Nángi still paints my toes. I don’t know where to go. The butcher doesn’t want me sleeping in the alley. The apothecary said it made villagers nervous when they saw me sleeping in front of the shop. The grass behind the Spirit House makes scary dreams, and the worn path by the village well smells funny. I saw a snake bigger than me there one time. I tried sleeping in the burnt circle, where the hut was, but it makes me cry too hard cause I can hear Nángi there. The meadow is too wet, and too open. It makes me shake like leaves when spaces are too big. The only place left is the here; the quiet patch inside the tree line.
I listen for wild pigs. Sometimes, I think I hear them, and then I run back into the village and sleep by the courtyard. Bigman says no, I can’t sleep there. He says if there was a raid on the village, no one needs someone in the way of the gate. It’s not safe, that’s what he said.
The foggy part comes back. My body fights to remember but what happened first or third or last is hard hazy. The forest is dark. Can’t even see streaks of the moon. Nighttime birds call; I call back. A hand – big, hairy, the hairs were black and not soft – pulls me deeper into the woods. You’re mine now, like your mama was. Smoke and dust heavy in the air. His face changes when I twist, try to pull away, and he jerks. “Better learn now—you don’t pull away from me.” He pulls away the strap that holds his woven covering. There’s ginger growing there. It’s low to the ground, as if it hides a secret. I stare at its wide and shiny leaves; they’re shaped like fat hearts painted with rain and smooth, like the skin of the frog. I can only see the flower because I’m lying on the ground.
How am I on the ground? Arm. Pulled. The flash of the canopy turning sideways above me. When he grips my chin, it hurts. I cry. His fingers dig into my skin. He says something but it’s muffled under the water in my brain. Water sloshes. Slosh, slosh, slosh. That’s what words sound like here. The leaves are louder. The crickets are louder.
When his fingers push under my dress, hurting me until I can’t see anything else, until I start screaming, “No, I don’t want to. Stop!” Does fire burn like this? He tells me to “…shut up” but I can’t, I can’t.
“Honeysuckle blooms where fear gets in, ginger for the shaking—”
My eyes find the flower again, the ginger. Ginver stops the shaking. Would it stop the shaking of my body? The way the damp soil rubs against my back, the way the trees bend and shake real fast while he grunts like wild pig. Wild pigs might eat me. The ginger flower don’t grow toward the sky.
It hides, round and chubby, like an animal sleeping with its mouth half open. Ginger is the a dark red but the blood is bright when he sticks me with something hard. I jerk my eyes off the ginger and scream again. He pushes his palm against my throat. I think he’s pushing me into the ground. Am I going to disappear into the ground like Nángi?
“Stop singing, stop screaming, just be still,” his voice sounds like rocks striking each other. “The ginger flower is like a secret cave.” I can’t find the ginger. I can’t find it. The air gets trapped in my throat; I can feel my heartbeat pulsing against his fingers. Then – there it is. The ginger again. “It’s a secret cave for fairies.” That’s what Nángi says. “Scratch the root, like this, and smell it—what’s it smell like?’ His breath is hot, heavy, and smells like dust and smoke. No. The ginger. Ginger smells spicy and warm. Peppery. I twist my head, trying to smell something other than dust, something other than the smoke of fire, but I can’t.
I shake hard when he leaves.
“Your blood – little witches like you need new blood. Yours is poisoned. I gave you new blood, so you’ll thank me.”
I scramble away, pulling the edge of my torn dress down, my eyes sticking to the blood soaking into the soil, staining between my legs. My blood is coming out. My breath hitches high, my heart pounds, and I start to scream. His hand comes down hard, clamps over my mouth. “Swallow it.”
I swallow hard, past the lump in my throat. Tears fall from my nose onto his hand over my mouth, I scoot back further, trying to breathe, but my grips the back of my head, holding me still. I think I’m dying.
Where do dead people go?
Will he eat my heart?
My mind drifts again, my eyes floating up, up, up to the treetops. Something moves in the branches; a spot of fur. I stare, trying to see it, his voice fading until all I can hear is the wind whistling in the trees. I don’t know what he says, but he leaves. I squeeze my legs together, tight until the muscles ache. If I don’t, more blood might come out. And I sing. I forget some of the words, though, but it helps slow the tears until I can breathe.
Hold me when the dark wind cries, little star up high
Little star, don’t go, stay where I can see
If the shadows… something, something… little star, hold me
Honeysuckle blooms where fear gets in, ginger for the shaking
Something,…she just walks, she just something, something
Hold me little star, little star up high, hold me.
My legs clench first, like they know something comes. Then my teeth grind, and my arms start shaking. When I look at my daughter’s eyes, I remember girl, trying to find ginger and honeysuckle. He will come. He will come and take her. And, if he takes her, I’ll never see her.
I step over branches, shielding her head with my elbow. I’ll take it somewhere. Where? He rubs me into the ground; sometimes he uses leather against my skin and, if I try to move, he squeezes my neck until the stars fall from the sky.
She cries.
I offer her my breast, but she doesn’t latch. I bounce my arms, humming. I can’t sleep. Every time my eyes start to drift, I worry about an animal finding us. Would a cassowary peck her? What if I didn’t hear the pigs in time? What if I don’t hear him?
When she cries, I split a short length of sugarcane with the bamboo blade and chew one end until it softens. When I press it to her mouth, a bead of sweetness touches her tongue. Her cries hitch, then soften into smaller sounds.
We’re very close now. I need her to be quiet.
There – there’s the Clan Mother’s hut. Smoke rises from her chimney as the sun begins its descent. The door to the hut is closed, but the window is open. I see her through the window, her arm pulling a basket off a shelf.
There were baskets in our huts. Baskets and bottles of herbs.
The baby wiggles, a tiny cry comes. I shift, offer her my nipple, rubbing it against her mouth until she opens, latches on, tugs. My eyes move back to the hut. The Clan Mother sits now. I can only see her face. I can’t see her hands, but I’ve watched her long enough that I know she’s sewing something. Or maybe mixing something.
Something makes her look up; I ease back, deeper into the forest, but where I can still see her. She shifts, stands. Opens her door and stares out at the woods. I barely breathe. Only when she turns and retreats inside do I close my eyes and exhale, my shoulders dropping.
My daughter’s hand flails in the air, lands against my chest. She clasps my finger in hers, gripping tight.
My own chin quivers.
A cassowary bird stands amid lush greenery in a tropical forestI began this work before the rain came, before I felt her tiny movements in my belly. I pulled long strips of bark from trees and kept them inside the teepee until they dried. Weaving them together was harder than I thought it would be. Several pieces of bark snapped; so did pieces of the vine. Some animals, likely birds, stole other pieces of bark for nest building. I press large banana leaves into the basket, layering it for extra softness.
He came last night.
I held the baby close to me, and wouldn’t put her down. He told me to give her to him, but the thought of her in his arms broke something deep inside of me. I don’t want to lose her. My chest feels empty without the weight of her small head against it; my tender breasts feel heavy and ache unless she is fed. I thought I’d see him in her face, but I don’t. She is mine.
But I cannot keep her.
“Alright,” his voice was amused. “You can have her tonight. I’ll make arrangements. That will be better for the village. When I come back, she goes with me.”
I swallow hard.
My hands tremble as I lift her weight away from my skin and lay her gently in the basket I’ve made. She wiggles, fusses, but quiets when I hum and give her my finger to hold. My eyes fall to the strip of grey cloth. It’s the only part left of the grey blanket the Clan Mother laid before me while I was strapped to the stake.
Nángi stood close to the Clan Mother; they clasped hands.
I pick her up from the basket, let her rest against my skin, rising to my feet. She won’t be dirty like me. Her blood won’t be tainted. The pool feels like the sky melted into the mountains; cool enough to sting. Too cold for her. But I dip my hand into it, swirl my fingers, then lift and gently wash her tiny face. Her rounded cheeks, her button nose, the starlike mark that matches mine near her eye, the small dent in her chin. I hold her tiny fist in mine, gently pushing my finger between hers to open her hand so I can wash her palm. She gurgles, her feet kicking against me, her other hand flailing.
I lift the end of my dress, wrap her in it, dry and warm her. The sound of my rumbling stomach makes me wonder if she’s hungry; I don’t want her to be hungry. I tell myself it’s time but I think about the weather. When the sun dips, it becomes cool here. Will she be warm enough in the basket? She’s always had the heat of my skin. She’s never known a night without it. Since she was born, I’ve never known a night without her against me.
But building a fire in Kavaru is too risky.
People might see.
When we get back to the tree, I wrap her in layers of banana and pandanus leaves, tucking the edges around her. I hold her in my arms because I want to remember her weight and carry the basket with other hand. I’ve waited as long as I can. He can come back at any time.
Stepping out from the tree line makes my heart beat fast. They think I’m dead. I haven’t been out of the woods in nine winters. Only he knows I’m alive. Feeling the air rush across my skin, my eyes never stop moving. The sky cries, its colors spread across the horizon in orange, yellow, and purple. The Clan Mother lives apart from the village; no other hut stands beside hers.
I close my eyes, count my breaths: one, two, three.
I bend and sit the basket in front of the door. The baby’s eyes are closed. Her stomach full, her body bathed and swaddled. When I lie her in the basket, her head turns toward me, her hand rises in the air, searching. I reach my finger out and she grips it, as she always does, pulls it to her mouth. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and almost pick the basket up and run back home.
But, if I do that, she will know him.
I clenched my legs together so tightly the muscles ached. I couldn’t sleep for fear that, if I drifted into slumber, my legs would loosen and I’d bleed to death.
No. The word feels strange, even in my thoughts. I don’t know its shape. But I know I can’t live without knowing where she is. Gently, slowly, I pull my finger from her grasp, bend down, and press my lips to her forehead. The sound of the Clan Mother moving inside pulls me upright. I turn, run.
Only when I am safely behind the trees do I take a deep breath and then make a guttural sound loud. “Boom. Boom. Boom.” I picture a cassowary stomping across the meadow and I wait.
When nothing happens, I call again—“Boom. Boom. Boom” — mimicking the cassowary’s loud, bellowing sound. It vibrates across the short distance from the tree line. I shift and start to call again when I see the Clan Mother in the window. A moment later, the door opens.
She stares down at the basket, looks up and around.
She steps out of the hut, walks two steps towards the woods. Carefully, silently, I move back. The baby’s cry turns her around. When she leans down, all I can see is her back; my breath catches in my throat.
One more glance, I beg silently. I just want one more glance. Please turn around. Then she does, and I see her cradling the baby as I have. She bounces it, her eyes looking out toward the trees. She pauses, then picks up the basket, and steps back inside. When she closes the door, I stare at the window, my breath held.
But I don’t see her—she doesn’t come to the window. I wait and wait until the sky darkens and my skin shivers. Only then do I turn to walk back into Kavaru. Only when I am near the tree again does a memory strike me like a drum: the missing last words of the lullaby: she just walks, she just booms.
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