Leatlu's Journey

I yawn and my stomach churns as I sit in Nonfiction Literature class today. The drone of Professor Cabb’s voice as he reads this passage from the textbook is getting the best of me. My mind is gone. Instead, I’m at the post office picking up another care package sent to me by my “Mamo”, a little love name I call my adopted mother. I smile as I think about the positive warmth her handmade treasures bring me while I study here at Knoxfork.

“Blue ice stretched to the horizon, fading into the blinding rays of another waning winter sun,” he reads. “She shivered violently as the shifting mass groaned under her feet. She instinctively glanced down, looking for cracks under the transparent sheen. Suddenly, she tensed, dropped to her knees and desperately clawed at the ice. She screamed, cursing the ground for not readily giving up the treasure she needed so badly."

He shifted in his seat then continued reading.

"Many hours later in the mist of the dawn, a group of Evenothes, government workers who travelled daily through the northern plateau, found her rigid and slumped on the ice. The Evenothes cackled like happy hyenas at the sight. They taunted her corpse and called her a Kaachi rathmos, a silly girl, who should have been home with her mother. They were even amused at how her bloodied fingers had become fused with the icy earth…”

I hear a scoff coming from behind me somewhere in the classroom. The professor hears it as well and abruptly stops reading. Straining over his gold wire spectacles at the drowsy and dreary eyes staring back at him, he helps gravity close the book. The echo could be heard throughout the classroom, probably reverberating in the halls and maybe even outside.

“You think this is funny?” he asks. “You think the untimely death of a young woman set forth on a journey along the dismal icy northern Cazola plains in subzero temperatures amusing?”

Quite often, we had been privy to Dr. Cabb’s outlandish tirades about various literary pieces. Just when Dr. Cabb was about to let us have it, some brave soul asks a million dollar question.

“Why did she die?”

Dr. Cabb slowly ascends from behind his desk and begins pacing the front of the classroom, his Brutinis drumming a methodical beat.

“Leatlu was only 15 when she became pregnant in her small oppressed village. We do not know the specifics of her pregnancy; whether it was from the beatings and rape she had endured many times from the guards or from a romantic tryst. All we know is that Leatlu, with the help of her mother Blesinga, hid the pregnancy. That summer by the time the snow melted, she had a baby girl. All was right with the world Leatlu thought. She finally had someone to call her own. She thought finally the great sky God had smiled on her. Then the winter came. It was the harshest winter the eldest of the elders could ever remember. Everything had frozen. The family’s harvest combined with the rations of the government were running out. On top of that, Leatlu’s baby was sick. Her cough grew worse."

Dr. Cabb left the front of the classroom and is now pacing the narrow aisles that separate our desks. Uneasiness again arose within me as I listen to him talk but this time it did not seem to derive from hunger. "I've read this before. I've read this before," I found myself saying over and over in my head. I began to quietly flip pages in the textbook, trying to locate the source of his increasingly intriguing recitation.

"The old village Shaman told Leatlu of a yellow farfara flower that grows wild in the south country that stops coughs and brings great healing. Leatlu thought maybe she should go look for this flower but her mother did not want her to go. It was so cold but the baby’s condition gradually got worse. So one night, Leatlu put on her warmest of gekti, sheep’s wool, and reindeer hide. With the Shaman’s blessing, Leatlu set out on her journey to save her baby girl. But Leatlu had never traveled so far from her village before and at a crossroad, she turned the wrong way. Tired, cold and now walking on shifting ice away from the tall evergreens, Leatlu knew she was lost. But something miraculous happened. Leatlu saw something brilliant beneath her feet through the ice. It was a farfara flower! Leatlu tried to dig through the ice as long as she could. The government workers found her the next morning. They returned her body to her village. Her mother, stricken with grief, prepared to bury her daughter. As she folded the clothing Leatlu wore on her journey, a yellow farfara flower fell to the floor from the gekti pocket. Her mother smiles and praises her sky God. She also thanks Leatlu for completing her journey. The baby coughing and crying in the background was saved.”

I hear the halt of the professor's pacing right in front of my desk.

“And that is why she died.”

I can’t look up, I won’t look up. I was scared, stunned and had tears in my eyes. It suddenly is all clear to me now. My adopted mother has made me beautiful headbands as long as I can remember. And on each headband, she always includes at least one small yellow flower. A farfara flower. I am Leatlu’s daughter! But... how did he know?