Bruco is the most unapologetically masculine character I have created. He has the name of an actual chief of his people, who was a contemporary of Leonardo. His personality is an amalgam of two men I am close to.
He returned to the wheeled camp before full night had fallen, even under the trees. He knew though, that in this broad hilly land of towering trees, that true night fell the quicker. He whistled for Augulis of the Wolf War Band—who Little Cacique had retrieved from a long-vanquished past along with that big-talking pacer Aristotle—to relieve him. Augulis whistled back and the thing was done.
No one will see or hear that ugly little back-stabber in the night.
Bruco went to his wife Maria, who was angered with him for bedding the sorceress Selene, who hated him for marrying Maria, who, in the past, had been a camp follower of the Spanish refugees that Crazy English had run down in the Redskin Wars after the Battle of the Buzzards.
She had just been a gift anyhow!
Yes, but since I did not personally slay her owners, she felt belittled by our union. With all of the sorceress’s parading around this insane world no wonder she spurns me. In this world she may even take a wife!
Aye, but if I had wet her hair with the gore of her men with my own hand she would respect me unconditionally, would not have put me off!
Bah, what is past is past. Let her drift away.
She has at least given me a son.
So I am forever indebted to a wench who hates me!
Not merely a wench, but a wife; a haughty, scheming, controlling—by He-who-sustains-sky-and-earth!
His head hurt before he even made it to her door. But he went through with the formalities of the kiss and the hug. He would do what he had to keep the peace in the presence of his little boy. Marco had only breathed under the stars for six moons, but was bright of eye. Bruco took the boy out into the night in his arms and whistled to him about the world while the rest reclined around the fire drinking and speaking of unfathomable things—the idle prattle of those who sit. He was determined that his war-whistles, signal-whistles, hunt-whistles, and greeting and leaving calls would be passed on.
Deep in the unremembered past Bruco’s people had been exiled and had had their tongues split to prevent normal social interaction among their fellow exiles. They had then, one-by-one and over the generations, been forced to swim from Fire-island to Exile Island. On Exile Island they learned to whistle. The strongest swam back across the Ocean to steal wives from Fire-island. With wives came children, children who were raised to whistle and speak.
These were the things that he whistled and spoke to Marco about in the night by the crackling fire, in this camp of sorcerers, in the world beyond the Sunset of the world to which he had been born. With all of the confidence that the infant would understand and remember, Bruco whispered and whistled to him about his forefathers: Bruco who floated off two stolen wives from Fire-island on goat bladders he had inflated with his own breath; how he hunted the Canarians of Big-island for the Spanish; how his son, Bruco’s father, had Hunted the Guanches on Fire-island and brought home Lapalma to wed; how Bruco—this Bruco holding baby Marco—had marched with Don Cortez and Crazy English in this vast land—blood up to their knees!
It only flowed up to the ankles, I know. But a boy likes a good story!
Eventually Maria came to him wanting Marco; respectfully giving Bruco time for his last words. Bruco was not much of a conversationalist. He liked telling his tales to Marco however, and always tried to end his story-time with words for his boy to live by. “Marco, don’t forget that this land is a great slumbering beast, and we are but fleas on its snout!”
Maria quietly tolerated his education of the baby with a smile, before folding Marco in her arms and taking him off into the wheeled house he once shared with her. Once again he slept under the stars as a dog of war should, as he had for most of his life.
Many women had been attracted to Bruco, and all had failed—or not cared—to understand him. Tapalma, his long lost mother: she had understood him. Of course she had been a woman of Fire-island, thousands of miles and hundreds of years gone. He wondered absently as the fire crackled, if such a woman still walked the world.
Perhaps no such woman walks in this sorcerer’s den of a world.
No, somewhere a woman sustains He-who-sustains-heaven-and-earth through her adulation; raising her tongue to the cloud-driven sky, else all would have perished!
But Crazy English is lost now.
Little Cacique will need a killer by his side soon enough, perhaps in a world where the men are still worth slaughtering, and where women might still raise their pretty heads who appreciate the art of it!
He sent out the ‘hunt’ whistle to Augulis in the night.
Back came the whistle that had returned too often for his taste; the long, low, plaintive whistle that indicated that nothing worth killing just now flitted among the shadowed autumn night about their camp on Sunset…refuge of haughty women and of scheming sorcerers.
