Tale of the Tribesman
Diocesan Girls’ Junior School, Yau Hazelle Nevada, Fiction: Group 2
O
nce when I was young, I visited the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. It was not a very popular
place to live in, all sand and prickly plants, so terribly hot in the day yet so horribly
freezing at night, so I was mostly alone with my jeep. After driving for several days and
not finding any snake-free shelter, I started to get thirsty. I looked in my water sack and
drank the last few drops. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, my jeep broke down, leaving
me stranded in a desert with nothing but wild animals and dunes of sand. My only hope of
survival was to find an oasis or to reach the local people before we perished.
Then, out of the blue, an ancient man walked up to me. He was probably over a hundred years
old, his long beard reaching down and tangling round his knees. He was also quite bald, with
only a few silvery hairs remaining on his head. His clothes were very strange, for it seemed as if
they were made from the skin of a black tailed gazelle. He hobbled towards me curiously, cocking
his head like a dog.
“Do you know the way to the locals, or to a place with some water?” I asked him. He pondered
for a moment then made his way among some plants that looked like nettles. He then stopped and
scratched his head, as if he didn’t understand.
“I will take you to Crescent Lake,” he finally announced in a croaking voice. “There you may
drink your fill and remember the fallen ones.”
“Who are the fallen ones?” I questioned him curiously. The old man cocked his head again,
started walking slowly and began his tale.
“It was long ago, when I was a wee lad, helping my friends in the tribe to collect food. It was
a memorable day, for we had caught two fat polecats and were going back to the campsite with
our chief, Long An. Then, a man who introduced himself as a fallen angel appeared before us and
asked for a place to stay. Long An didn’t believe in such sissy stuff, none of us did at that time,
and he laughed at the angel. Suddenly, Long An’s mood changed and he briskly led the angel
across the desert sands. It was then that we truly believed he was an angel.”
“Our camp was just a little bit of grassland with nettles on one end and sand dunes closely
packed tightly together on the other, so it was quite safe from wild animals. Anyway, we asked
him where he came from, and as if his answer were helpful to us, he replied, ‘I am one of the
angels of paradise. Can you tell me where the jungle is?’”
“Of course we didn’t know where it was, since the Gobi was miles and miles away from any
large-scaled jungle as far as we knew. Not wanting to upset him too much by telling him that
there never was a jungle here, Long An simply said, ‘The jungle was gone long ago.’ Then he
turned to the matters of making dinner.”
“While I was pushing dinner around in the fire with my stick, our huntsmen picked up rocks
and sharpened their stone knives. Our ladies and their children picked up fine, grass-woven
baskets and plucked some herbs from the ground, singing as they worked. When dinner was ready,
I ripped the polecat apart, sprinkled on some herbs and gave little pieces of meat to everyone in
the camp. Long An threw an extra piece into the fire as an offering to the gods, and we all began
to eat. I soon noticed that the angel wasn’t devouring his meat like everyone else was. Instead, he
was muttering something strange under his breath, though I didn’t pay much attention to that. I
