A Caliber By Any Other Name

(This story originally won 2nd place in the "Invalid Item" )

A CALIBER BY ANY OTHER NAME

Godasiyo looked at the box of shells, unable to make out anything but the numbers on the box's side. Even the numbers she really didn't know, other than to match their shapes up to the size of the shells needed for the rifle resting on her lap.

She looked at the picture hanging from her cabin's wall. It was a black and white photo from fifty years ago. The picture was her and her husband, along with their three sons. At the time, her youngest child was barely two years old

The People had been dwindling even then, but their voice was still heard.

The white eyes, though, had been trying to quiet that voice even then.

A golden-haired woman had come to visit Godasiyo's village, bringing promises of opportunities for the village's children, if only they would come to the schools and the churches of the white eyes.

Godasiyo's husband had known a few words of the white eyes, and thought that sending his sons away would bring a brighter future for them than if they remained with the People. Godasiyo argued against it, but the ways of the People were changing, even as the white eyes pushed the People in on themselves. Even when Godasiyo had been a little girl, the women of the People had had a voice in the decisions that affected all. But when it came to the decision on what to do with their sons, her husband's words were the only ones that carried weight. The ways of the white eyes was becoming the ways of the People.

The words of the white eyes was also becoming the words of the People. There was a time when one could walk from the village of Hadenga, at the mouth of the Great River, to the town of Tyendig, on the western edge of the first of the Great Inner Seas, and be able to understand anyone you met along the way.

Then the white eyes arrived. Little by little, they pushed the People back, until finally the People weren't one, but a group of small tribes scattered across the lands they once called their own.

Some of the People, including Godasiyo's husband, began adapting themselves to the ways of the white eyes. Godasiyo's husband even tried to make her learn the words of the white eyes, but Godasiyo resisted with all her being.

Twenty years ago, when Godasiyo's husband had died, there were few people left who could speak the language of People with ease. And Godasiyo was the only one she knew who didn't speak any of the words of the white eyes.

Five years ago, the last person (besides Godasiyo) who spoke the language had died. Godasiyo had found herself alone in the world of the white eyes.

Granted, her oldest son knew a few words of the language of the People. But the conversations between Godasiyo and him were part words, part hand signs, and all frustration.

Her youngest son didn't know any of the words of the People, and seemed to hold Godasiyo in contempt for being ignorant of the language of the white eyes. She saw him rarely, and even then, she could tell that he had been forced to see her by her eldest son. The meetings between Godasiyo and her youngest son were always the same. Godasiyo would always say to herself, 'I have to make him understand somehow.' Try to let him know that if he did nothing, the ways and words of the People would die with her. But her youngest son didn't not care to understand his mother. And it was Godasiyo's youngest son that would become the source of her ultimate humiliation.

Godasiyo looked at the photo of herself and her family on her cabin's wall. That had been a gift from a traveling white eyes who wanted to learn the ways of the People or, as he put it, "to learn the history of the People before they all disappeared."

That's what his final words of parting had been, according to her husband.

And now she was waiting for her ultimate humiliation. The friends of her youngest son.

Their first visit had caught her by surprise. Her youngest son had simply shown up on the porch of her cabin with a small group of young adult white eyes in tow. Her son pushed her aside with no attempt at ceremony, letting his young friends inside the cabin. The group immediately starting pawing her items, making sounds of surprise and delight. As the young white eyes made scribbling and drawings on their pads, talking excitedly among each other, Godasiyo's son watched on with amusement. When her son saw Godasiyo staring at him, he merely smirked at her, then returned his attention to the young white eyes.

One of the young white eyes set up a strange box in the middle of the room. It had a strange, waxy-like disk sitting on top of it, with a metal flower sprouting from it. It looked like a half-opened yunwia usdita, a flower that Godasiyo had not seen since she was a little girl. A flower that had begun disappearing since the arrival of the white eyes.

From their words and gestures, it became obvious that the young white eyes wanted her talk into the metallic yunwia usdita. The box with the metallic yunwia usdita could somehow take Godasiyo's words from the air and store them on the waxy-like disk. Godasiyo had just stared in silent wonder at the box, despite the young white eyes's efforts to get her to speak into the metallic yunwia usdita. Godasiyo's son, frustrated by his mother's uncooperative silence, walked over her to her and began shouting at her, making pointed gestures at the artificial yunwia usdita. Godasiyo didn't understand a single word that her son was saying, but it was obvious what he wanted. She stubbornly maintained her silence. When her son raised his hand to strike her, the young white eyes quickly intervened, holding his hand back.

After a heated exchange between her son and the young white eyes, the group picked up their box and started leaving Godasiyo's cabin. They also started taking some of Godasiyo's possessions, belongings that reminded Godasiyo of her place among the People. Godasiyo tried to stop them, but her son held her back with contemptuous ease.

When one of the young white eyes began removing the picture of her family from the cabin's wall, Godasiyo broke free from her son's grip and snatched the picture away from the surprised young white eyes's hands. The young white eyes turned to her son, who merely laughed and said something in return. The young white eyes gathered their new prizes and left the cabin. Before they left, though, Godasiyo's son pointed at the picture in her arms and said something to the rest of the white eyes.

It had been three days since that encounter, and Godasiyo knew the group would return, both to capture her words and to take her last reminder of her husband and her children, when all of them had truly been part of the People. It was ironic, Godasiyo thought, that her most treasured possession was made possible by a tool of the white eyes.

And it was another tool of the white eyes that would let her protect her memory. The rifle on Godasiyo's lap had been a possession of her husbands, taken in trade from a traveling white eyes merchant. Godasiyo still used it from time to time, to supplement the corn meal that a white eyes would bring her every month.

Godasiyo knew that her youngest son and his white eyes friends would return this morning. She had found a yunwia usdita growing in a rocky patch near her cabin, the first one she had seen in years. It was obviously struggling to stay alive where it was, but it was surviving. Its bloom may be have been faded, but it was in bloom nonetheless.

Godasiyo peered into the distance. She could see her son and the white eyes getting out of one of the things the white eyes used to travel about in. It was a recent white eyes innovations, but the white eyes simply couldn't help themselves. They were always creating such things. Godasiyo looked up at the picture on her cabin wall. Obviously, not all the creations of the white eyes were bad things.

As her son and his white eyes friends approached her cabin, Godasiyo stood up and put the rifle butt against her shoulder, taking aim. Yes, perhaps there was something good to say about ways of the white eyes, and the tools and weapons that they brought with them.

But there was something to say about the ways and words of the People as well. And as long as Godasiyo drew breath, those ways and words would bloom in dignity and strength, no matter how rocky the soil she found herself rooted in.