Hunter's Moon

By U. Fathima Farzana

Silence everywhere except on the dark blue sea. Adam stood on the roof of the colossal view tower on the edge of a dangerous precipice. With him stood little Ned, staring at the vast expanse stretched before their tiny existence. It was an evening after sunrise when the moon was out, large and bright even before twilight.

“Why is the moon so big and bright before dark today” asked ten year old Ned.

“It’s a hunter’s moon. The farmers named it so because this moon gave them bright light during the entire night and they could harvest the crops in peace. The hunters were delighted because they didn’t need any other light that might distract the animals,” explained Adam. He wasn’t used to staring at the moon from the oceanfront. He hadn’t even dreamed in his wildest dreams of becoming a guard at the view tower by the sea.

They had all been farmers – Adam and his folk. The smell of fresh earth, the smooth skins of freshly gathered mangoes and the spear-like-heads of wheat were all Adam had known. They were his world.

“We are men of the earth. We till it when we need food and lie beneath it once we are dead,” his father had said just like his grandfather before him. They had nothing to do with the sea. Then came Famine – she of the shriveled skin, withered hair and bony cold fingers that extinguished life at the first touch. Adam was sent to the coast to save himself with whatever remained in the larder. Adam had been eight then. He had boarded the first bus he saw, nudged up between baskets and pushed over. He got down when he saw the sea – he had never seen anything like it before and believed it to be an enormous blanket covering the earth.

Life was hard at the coast. He had gone around in rags, begging for food when a kind old man with beady eyes took him to the view tower. This old man was the guard then and he gave a home and affection to poor Adam. The guard took him to the caverns beneath the rocks and told him stories.

“The Spirits of the Sea guard us while we guard the tower. They protect us when we protect the people who go up and come down from this tower,” said he.

“Wow! Then we won’t die, will we?” asked Adam.

“No. But we will be taken to live with them when we have done our duties well. Otherwise, we’ll be thrown to the sea devil who lives among those jagged rocks over there,” he said. Just when Adam was beginning to know happiness, the old man went missing. It had all happened so silently that Adam didn’t even wake up. When he did, he saw nothing from his window but a faint hunter’s moon vanishing in the light of the rising sun. Though he had wept at first, Adam consoled himself that the man would be happier than him with the Spirits of the Sea. That was how Adam had become the guard.

Ned had come floating to him from somewhere when he was sending the last batch of tourists back. The poor boy was an orphan and Adam had always wanted a little brother. As he recalled all of this, he knew that Ned was someone who brought happiness to his otherwise lonely heart. He came to know from the bus driver that the entire population of his village had perished in the famine. Ned was the only family he had now. So he taught him whatever the previous guard had to Adam. They flew kites in the evening, listened to the tourists talking to each other in the morning and sat listening to the waves in the night. They were happy, at least for a while.

Trouble came in the form of Adam’s boss. This boss was as unpredictable and untamable as the sea. He would decrease wages, increase the work, forget to feed his employees and even beat them up. Adam could put up with all this. It was his boss’s sudden impulses that he couldn’t digest. That particular evening, when Adam and Ned were out in the roof admiring the hunter’s moon, this boss strode in with a devilish grin on his no good face. He went straight to Adam and took him aside.

“What’d you not give for a little free drink? Let’s go down to the liquor shop and have our way. Come on,” that was an order, not a question. Adam blurted something about looking after Ned but the boss literally pushed him out into the shore. Adam didn’t know when he had crossed the little swinging bridge and reached the shopping avenue. His legs were pushed on by his boss’s instinct. They reached the liquor shack owned by the government and ordered. Adam thought he was drinking acid. The sharp liquor stung his tongue and burnt his chest. His stomach churned with protest to the new poison. All the time, his mind was with Ned. The little boy would run away to play adventure. Worries ate into his mind while the acid ate his body.

Back at the tower and Adam felt he had touched the devil himself. “I’ll never go out with my boss even if it gets me fired,” resolved Adam.

“Ned, are you in bed so soon?” he called out with a tinge of anxiety. No answer.

“Ned, where are you?” came the next question with worry. He was not on the tower and he was not in the cabin. Adam went down to the caverns and his voice echoed back but there was no sign of Ned. He saw tiny phosphorescent fish flit by in the dark water. A pair of footprints by the little pool confirmed his worst fears. The boy had tried to catch the fish and had been washed into the ocean by one of those enormous waves that were common during a full moon’s night. He leaped into the sea without a thought. The sea was very deep and dark. He couldn’t see a thing. The liquor made his head hurt. His legs were refusing to obey the commands sent by his brain. There was no sign of the boy.

After a few more leaps, Adam could see tiny bulbs in the water. More of those neon fish. He found something floating in that light. It was Ned’s dhoti caught on a rock. He tried to pull it free and felt something tug at his leg. It was the swirling current. He was pulled in and swirled about in the blink of an eye. The current threw him over the jagged rocks near the coast. At that instant, the old man’s voice told him that he had failed in his duty. The boy had gone down to live with the spirits but he must become the food of the sea devil. Adam’s eyes closed with a glimpse of the hunter’s moon a second before his head was dashed open upon the rocks.

Dawn brought crowds staring at a mutilated corpse stuck up on the rocks, its hands clutching a boy’s dhoti. The boss would not even identify the body. “He’s a nobody,” was all he said. The beach was closed for a week. People were terrified and some believed that a murderer was in their midst. Autopsy confirmed the presence of alcohol in Adam’s blood. “Must be a suicide,” said the police and the case was closed. The beach opened up grander than before and nobody missed the guard of the view tower and his little brother. They were people of the earth and they had nothing to do with the sea.

The tale ends with a warning to those who corrupt the joy of others. This is a warning to all those who ruin themselves by the devil’s elixir. And dear reader, be kind to people like Adam who risk their lives every second of the day just to protect us. Be kind to those who provide for us but don’t have anything to provide themselves. Shed a compassionate tear for all our friends who have not our happiness in life and for all such heroes who end up somewhere unknown and unsung.

By U. Fathima Farzana